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DESCRIPTIVE LIST 


NOVELS AND 





DEALING WITH 


AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


COMPILED BY 

W : M. GRISWOLD, A. B. (Harvard.) 

EDITOR OF "THE MONOGRAPH * ’, A COLLECTION OF FIFTY-FOUR HISTORICAL ANQ 
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS; AND OF "TRAVEL”, A SIMILAR SERIES 
DEVOTED TO PLACES, 


























CAMBRIDGE, MASS : 

W; M. GRISWOLD, Publisher. 


1890. 






/ 




Novels of American Country Life. 


The object of this list is to direct readers, such as would enjoy the kind of books 
here described, to a number of novels, easily obtainable, but which, in many 
cases, have been forgotten within a year or two after publication. That the 
existence of works of fiction is remembered so short a time is a pity, since, for every 
new book of merit, there are, in most libraries, a hundred as good or better, un¬ 
known to the majority of readers. It is hoped that the publication of this and 
similar lists ivill lessen, in some measure, the disposition to read an inferior new 
book when superior old books, equally fresh to most readers, are at hand. 

This list ivill be followed by others describing fiction dealing with American 
City Life, and with lists of “International” and Romantic novels. The compiler 
would be pleased to have his attention called to any works deserving a place which 
have escaped his attention. It may be observed, that, while excluding all which do 
not deal with country life, he has tried to include among these only such as are 
well-written, interesting, andfree from sensationalism, sentimentality, and pretense. 

The selected “ notices” here given are generally abridged. 


ACHSAH [by “Rev. P: Pennot,” Lee 
<£ >Shepard, 1876.] “There is a certain 
smartness about‘Achsah’ which may make 
it popular in those rustic communities 
where living examples of the models 
portrayed in its pages are to be found. 
The heroine, Achsah, is a country girl, the 
dauter of Deacon Sterne. This deacon 
is the best-drawn character of the book; 
his cunning, hypocrisy, and meanness 
make him an amusing caricature of certain 
Yankee faults. He’ bears the mark of 
being drawn from life by a very bitter 
enemy, who does not always hold 
his hand when he is expressing his scorn. 
The hero, Owen Rood, ay ho accumulates, 
money by writing magazine articles—one 
of them on Luther!—is a creature of tlnf« 
imagination rather than of flesh and blood. 
Ilis troubles are of a familiar sort, and are 
easily cleared away as we approach the 


end of the story. What is good in all this 
is the account of the unadulterated New 
England people; less good is the roman¬ 
tic part, and the plot is too light to bear 
the superstructure.” [Nation. 1 

ADIRONDACK STORIES [by Phil¬ 
ander Deming, Houghton, 1880.] “Ge¬ 
ographically, the Adirondaeks are at no 
great distance from the Atlantic, but for 
literary purposes they are very far Avest 
indeed, and Mr. Deming’s style and meth¬ 
od show him to be distinctly related to 
that group of writers who liaA r e their 
head-quarters beyond the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains. His subjects, chosen from a com¬ 
mon, even rude life, are poetic and pitched 
a low key, consisting mostly of some 
‘ bit of elemental pathos simply and sug- 
gestively rendered. The most original 
and striking feature of Mr. Deming’s 
Avork is his adherence to pure narrative, 


I 

H* Y. l J ubho 141 

*v 





NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 



r— T 



S' 



and the strong, often dramatic effects 
gained by discarding entirely the drama¬ 
tic form. We recall no other writer who 
has attempted to express so much in this 
way. The story is told almost without aid 
from the characters, who unburden them¬ 
selves mainly tlirou the medium of the 
author, in the “oratio obliqua.” Sometimes 
they are not allowed to speak at all; Lida 
Ann , the subject of a very true and ten¬ 
der sketch, does not utter a word while 
her sad little life history is unfolded. The 
reader is not called upon to be pre¬ 
sent at the scene, but merely to listen to a 
relation of what lias taken place; yet 
such is the vigor and truth of Mr. 
Deming's narrative that we are transport¬ 
ed thither despite the prohibition, and 
only afterwards begin to wonder how 
characters whose speech we have not 
heard, whose actions are by no means 
elaborately dwelt upon, have been made 
so real and vivid to us. Mr. Deming pos¬ 
sesses the art of turning at once to the 
most effective point of his story and set¬ 
ting it in a strong light. lie writes in a 
repressed, trenchant style, so weeded of 
redundances that the few words which 
remain seem doubly charged with mean¬ 
ing. It is not often that a book made up 
of fragmentary publications exhibit such 
unity as we find in these Adirondack 
stories. Not only is the scene the same 
throuout, but a certain steadfastness of 
literary purpose is everywhere apparent. 
There is no unevenness, or shifting of 
styles; the aim raised in the beginning is 
pursued to the end. It is a book which 
distinctly gains in value by being read as 
a whole. It is only in that way that its 
full significance as a picture of an out-of- 
the-way life can be measured. Each 
sketch is the story of a single character or 
incident; the whole book is the history of 
a community. The entire action takes 
place within “the neighborhood,” a term 
including, apparently, about 20 miles of 
Adirondack forest, and the individual 
most carefully studied is the public senti¬ 
ment of this district. Every event is 
viewed not alone by itself, but in refer¬ 


ence to how the world, that is the knot of 
men at a country-shop, regard it; and Mr. 
Deming has learned the inconsistencies, 
the harsh cruelty and warm, capricious 
kindliness, of this omnipotent jury, as he 
has noted the shifting aspects of the 
Adirondack scenery, which forms a va¬ 
riant frame-work for his dramas. Ilis 
landscape is eaut by a few instantaneous 
strokes, and is set before us full of moist¬ 
ure, atmosphere, and movement.” [At¬ 
lantic. 2 

AMONG THE LAKES [by W: O. 
Stoddard, Scribner , 1SS3.] “A narra¬ 
tive of life at a delightful country home, 
where city cousins and country cousins 
are reunited during the summer. It is 
quiet and healthful in tone, and full 
of mirth and cheerfulness. Finer Hunter, 
the country boy, is a remarkably fine fel¬ 
low. Pi, the city youth, has also points of 
excellence, tho he does not especially 
rouse our admiration. Any boy or girl 
from 8 to 14, aut to enjoy the book thoro- 
ly.” [Nation. 3 

ANNIE K1LBURN [by W: 1>. How¬ 
ells, Harper, 1888.] There is more 
satire than pathos in this story, yet the 
account of the domestic life of the clever 
and generous, and (in spite of his one 
“bad habit”) attractive lawyer, is full 
of pathos. It is a case of dipsomania 
rather than habitual drunkenness which is 
here presented, and no one who has lived in 
a New England town can fail to recog¬ 
nize the truth of this picture of a man, 
well-born, well-educated, of unusual ability 
and deeply interested in his profession, 
yet ruined by drink. We have spoken 
first of this character not because he is, by 
any means, of the first importance in the 
novel, but for the reason that his prototype 
is appallingly frequent in New England 
life, and has rarely been treated in litera¬ 
ture except in publications avowedly 
tracts, whose descriptions, if read at all by 
the cultivated public, would of course be 
subject to discount.—The other characters 
are nearly all equally good;—the clergy¬ 
man, able, earnest, self-sacrificing, inclined 
to take the teachings of Jesus literally and 


9 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


seriously, (therein reminding one of 
“Joshua Davidson”), and hence inevitably 
falling out with his satisfied and selfish 
parishioners, whose chief representative is 
the typical smart business man of a small 
town, here admirably drawn. The life of 
the summer colony, again (the geography 
of the place suggests Beverly) is brot out, 
especially in their relations to the towns¬ 
people, in a'delightfully humorous fashion. 
It may be added that tho the motives of 
the story are serious they are handled 
with so much humor that the narrative is 
as entertaining and amusing as it is true to 
life. 4 

APRIL HOPES [by W: D. Howells, 
Harper , 1S87.] “Mr. Howells shows 
a light and exquisite touch in “April 
Hopes,” a novel, it is safe to say, in 
which all his finer qualities are seen 
at their best. The story is for all the 
world like a spring day when showers 
and sunshine gracefully intermingle. 
Story, we say, while in reality there is no 
story at all. Only' an account of how two 
young things fell in love with one another 
and quarrelled and made up. and quar¬ 
relled again, and made up again, and broke 
off the engagement once more, and finally 
made up for good and were married. And 
how charmingly the affair is put before us 
—all the foolish, silly, entrancing details 
are there, and never does the author ex¬ 
ceed the limits of probability or the canons 
of good taste. It is like a pretty play, for 
the narrative in the book is a poor penny¬ 
worth of bread to an infinite deal of sack 
in shape of bright and sparkling dialog. 
We sit and watch Dan and Alice at their 
love meetings and their love quarrels, hear 
them exchange their bits of romantic non¬ 
sense, see them go throu their little deceits 
and flights of tragedy and playing at 
broken hearts, and listen while they utter 
protestations of undying affection and 
vows of unwavering faith. It is all very 
pretty, very dainty, very touching, and 
every one who assists at the performance 
must feel that here at any rate is a bit of 
reality. The doctrine of elective affinities 
has no place in the world of “April 


Hopes.” “Girlhood,” in the author’s 
view, “is often a turmoil of wild impulses, 
ignorant exaltations, mistaken ideals, 
which really represent no intelligent pur¬ 
pose, and come from disordered nerves, 
ill-advised reading, and the erroneous per¬ 
spective of inexperience.” When two 
creatures thus constituted indulge in the 
frantic effort of trying to reconcile their 
ideals the comedy and tragedy of court¬ 
ship begin, for, as Mr. Howells says once 
more, “the difficulty in life is to bring ex¬ 
perience to the level of expectation, to 
match our real emotions in view of any 
great occasion with the ideal emotions 
which we have taut ourselves that we 
nut to feel.” The novel is truly a 
charming production.” [Boston “Literary 
World.”] Much of the action is at Cam- 
pobello, and the descriptions of the scen¬ 
ery are charming. 5 

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST [by 
Bayard Taylor, Putnam , 1872.] “In 
the 4 stories we have named, and es¬ 
pecially in ‘Jacob Flint’s Journey,’ and 
‘Friend Eli’s Dauter,’ we find a native 
charm and a fine local flavor that we should 
not know where to match outside of Auer¬ 
bach’s tales. There is, with an utter 
difference of material, a natural similarity 
of atmosphere in these Pennsylvania 
and German stories. They are alike in 
rusticity of event and character, and in 
the country sweetness which hangs about 
them like an odor of fields and woods, as 
well as the unpatronizing spirit in which 
simple people’s life is regarded.” [At¬ 
lantic. G 

BETTY LEICESTER [by S.. O. Jew¬ 
ett, Houghton, 1889.] “Possesses the 
vital touch without which no incident 
can impress itself; with which the sim¬ 
plest details are imbued with a real life 
of their own. The descriptions of country 
life and scenes are exquisite. There are 
good suggestions to those whose lives 
have become so fixed in a narrow and 
unchanging routine that even the sim¬ 
plest form of entertaining seems moment¬ 
ous and overpowering. Everything 
is invested with a simple and health- 


a 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


ful but constant interest, from the begin¬ 
ning, where Betty starts alone, with some 
misgiving, for Tideshead, to the very last 
page, when she and her father are leaving 
the quaint little village with real regret, 
albeit to take up their wider life once 
more.” [Nation. 7 

BETWEEN WHILES [by H.. (F.) 
(II.) Jackson, Roberts, 1887.] “Is a 
collection of tales which, with the 
exception of the first and longest, have al¬ 
ready been printed. And they very well 
stand the test of being half forgotten after 
a hasty reading in some magazine, and 
then, years afterward, being read again. 
In every case the memory of the story, al¬ 
most as soon as the first sentence is read, 
ponies back in all its entirety, the charac¬ 
ters seem like old friends, and there is 
genuine pleasure in listening to their sim¬ 
ple talk and breathing the wholesome odor 
of their surroundings. The first story, 
“The Inn of the Golden Pear,” w T as left 
incomplete at the author’s death', and one 
regretfully wonders what she would have 
made of the lives of Willan and Victorine. 
The few chapters which but finish what 
might be called the first episode are filled 
at once with strength and subtlety quite 
beyond anything else in the volume. In 
spite of the sudden infatuation of Wil¬ 
lan, and the quaint romance of a bygone 
time that would serve ordinarily to give 
such a tale a tinge of unreality, there is a 
naturalness, a pervading sense of being 
close to life and nature, a vigor and grasp, 
that compels one’s interest and admiration. 
But it is chiefly the purity, the elevation 
and gentle fer.vor which throuout these 
stories disclose their author at her nest, 
and win the hearts of her warmest admir¬ 
ers.” [Nation. 8 

BLUFFTON [by M. J. Savage, Lee & 
Shepard , 1878.] “Is one of many books 
of the same kind which are to be 
written, and the public who see in it a 
partial description of what the public 
thots and speculations are and have 

been, will be grateful if the books 

that are to come are as good-humored, as 
sincere, and no more inconclusive than 


this one. The story is simple. The Rev. 
M: Trafton goes from the East to take 
charge of a church in the West. He has 
no doubt of the orthodoxy of his creed or 
of the firmness of his belief; and full of 
hope and youth he means to live his life 
strait out in the place where his work is 
appointed. At first he is eminently suc¬ 
cessful. The sermons, which come from 
his heart, touch the hearts of his hearers. 
He finds the one woman for him; she ac¬ 
cepts his offer, and life looks full of the 
best and happiest promises. Gradually he 
is found less than orthodox. A council is 
called to consider his heresies, and before 
it assembles, questions as to his personal 
character and the purity of his life furnish 
further food for inquiry. These, of course, 
are triumphantly vindicated, but his mis¬ 
beliefs are manifest, and his betrothed 
counts him an infidel and refuses to break 
her father’s heart by marrying him. So 

far all is natural and coherent.Job’s 

asses and oxen arc here represented by 
travels in Europe for Mr. Trafton, after 
which he meets his former love in a sum¬ 
mer-house in a gentleman’s place in Cali¬ 
fornia. They make it up at once; her 
father is dead — we believe he left a compe¬ 
tent fortune — and soon after Mr. Trafton 
receives a call from a certain number of 
people in New York who desires to hear 
whatever he may have to say, and with 
this nimbus neatly fitted round his head 
the book closes.” [Nation. 0 

BOSCOBEL [N. Y.: W. B. Smith & 
Co.] “Shows not very much skill in con¬ 
trivance of plot or portraiture of character; 
but it is worth an hour’s reading for the 
pretty sketching of Florida scenery and 
of the life there of the winter sojourners.” 
[Nation. 10 

CAPE COD AND ALL ALONG 
SHORE [by Charles Nordhoff, Har¬ 
per , I860.] “The editors of this Magazine 
[Atlantic] remember with pleasure i% El- 
kanah Brewster’s Temptation ;” and we 
fancy that there are others who will be 
glad to read it a second time in this collec¬ 
tion. It is no dispraise of them to say 
that Mr. Nordhoff’s stories are all light— 


4 



) 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


“easy things to understand,”—aim to 
please and entertain folk, and do not 
grapple with problems of any kind, unless 
perhaps the doubtful wisdom of forsaking 
simple Cape Cod and country-town ways, 
for the materializing and corrupting career 
of newspaper men and artists in New 
York. Elkanah Brewester barely over¬ 
comes his temptation, and returns to the 
Cape just in time to be true to Hepsy Ann, 
while Stofile McGurdigan actually suc¬ 
cumbs, becomes a great editor, and breaks 
faith with pretty Lucy Jones. Tho the 
interest of these and the other stories of 
the book is not complex, the satire is 
wholesome and just, and the reader will 
scarcely escape being touched by the 
pathos. The character in them is good 
enuf to be true of the scenes of most of 
tales which take us among places and 
people seldom touched by magazine fic¬ 
tion, and not here exhausted. It seems to 
us that Meliilabel Boger’s Cranberry 
Swamp is thebest of all.” 11 

CAPE COI) FOLKS [by Sally P. 
McLean, Boston, Williams, 1881.] 
“The author is so successful in her 
sketches of real life that it is a pity she has 
not confined herself to them. It is only a 
new illustration of the fact that the power 
of reproduction is quite other than that of 
creation. What she saw or knew she has 
given with vivid force. A note from the 
publishers implies that some offense has 
been taken at the frankness of the por¬ 
traiture of local manners, but surely not 
by the delightful, impossible, actual “Ce¬ 
dar Swampers” themselves, for the tone 
of the book as a whole is one of hearty ap¬ 
preciation: for one example, the recogni¬ 
tion of the beauty and power of their sing¬ 
ing, and the part played by such music in 
a simple, primitive community—their one 
fine art. The impression of the book that 
will linger longest may be the refrain of 
the hymns swelling and dying above the 
monotone of the surf.” [Nation. 12 
CAPTAIN POLLY [by Sophie 
Swett, Harper , 1889.] “Is a fine tale 
of a wise and courageous girl, who may 
serve as a good model for other girls to 


grow like, and also as a lesson in shame¬ 
facedness to boys for their silly airs 
of superiority over their sisters. 
Nothing shows more plainly the greater 
nearness of boys to their savage ancestry 
than the fiction which still holds among 
them that it is they who hold the reins of 
government. The Captain Polly of this 
book was the natural and actual ruler of 
her family, but that did not in the least 
shake the confidence of her brothers that 
both their organization and their stock of 
ideas were in every way superior to hers.” 
[Nation. 13 

CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE, A. [by 
W: D. Howells, Boston, 1873]. “ A 

Chance Acquaintance’ introduces some 
of the people who had figured briefly 
in ‘Their Wedding Journey,’ and weaves 
for them a love story on Canadian ground, 
in a way that shows that one need not be an 
Arbuton to prefer the half-European fla¬ 
vor of that unamericanized part of the 
country to the less romantic scenery of the 
United States. But if the setting is partly 
foreign, the story does not lose in interest 
on that account, and the people who are 
brot before us are taken as types of two 
very different kinds of Americans. The 
heroine, Kitty Ellison, is a Western girl 
who has had none of the advantages of 
finishing schools, symphony concerts, and 
Lowell lectures, but lias been reared among 
sensible people who have had their work 
to do and who, besides attending to that, 
had been sturdy Abolitionists at a time 
when slavery had more defenders than it 
has now. From the glimpse we get of her 
life it is easy to see how well it encouraged 
the independence and individuality of her 
character, and the humor which is so 
prominent an American trait. The other 
actor in the play is Mr. Miles Arbuton, of 
Boston, who has had bestowed on him all 
that the heart of man could desire—wealth, 
good family, personal attractiveness of a 
certain sort, education, foreign travel, so 
that if young people had nothing better to 
do than to serve as examples of the truth of 
proverbs it would seem as if here were a 
romance ready to break forth between two 


5 




NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


such different people. The lack of resem¬ 
blance lies, too, much deeper than this. 
Kitty has all the charm which must belong to 
a young, pretty, kindly, sympathetic girl, 
while Arbuton has all the narrowness, 
coldness, and exclusiveness which are 
disagreeable when they are found in con¬ 
trast with what one would naturally ex¬ 
pect from all the advantages he possesses, 
and, it must be said, with what one sees of 
such people in the flesh. With Kitty, Mr. 
Howells has been remarkably successful; 
he has drawn a really charming girl, and 
how difficult and rare a thing that is to do 
every novel-reader can testifiy. All her 
part in the love-making, her innocence, her 
readiness to be pleased, her kindness 
towards Arbuton’s foibles, her sensitive 
dignity, her charming humor, belong to a 
real human being, not to the familar lay- 
figure which, one day practical, the next 
sentimental, goes throu the conventional 
process of love-making with dull unifor¬ 
mity in the writings of the majority of 
novelists. The plot of the story is simply 
that of the wooing of this lovely girl by the 
cold Boston man, whose blue blood freezes 
in his veins at any reference to the South 
End of his native city. The story is very 
prettily told, with its conclusion success¬ 
fully hidden till the last from the prying 
wonder of the reader. The many little 
touches of humor which every reader of 
Mr. Howells has learned to expect in Uis 
works, and which have given him his place 
as the best of the younger generation of 
American humorists, are to be found con¬ 
tinually in this novel. The descriptions of 
the scenery, which must be familiar to 
many, are well done.” [Nation. 14 

CIRCUIT RIDER, The [by E: 

Eggleston; N. Y., Ford , 1874.] “Mr. 
E: Eggleston’s stories have had from 
the beginning a great popularity with 
a large circle of readers, and it has 
been in many ways well deserved. They 
are full of incident; all of these rapid 
events occur amid scenes almost entirely 
new to the Eastern reader and the new 
generation of Westeners; and they have, 
in a high degree, the element of dialectic 


speech, which intrinsically for itself is a 
popular element, and which, delusively 
perhaps as often as really, confers upon 
the personages of the story that appear¬ 
ance of reality and individuality for which 
the novel-writer has to watch so keenly 
and work so hard. Another important 
quality of Mr. Eggleston’s books, and one 
which does much to hoid fast the sort of 
readers whom his novelty and liveliness 
attract, is his good nature, which never 
fails to make him always kind to his char¬ 
acters and keeps for him a constant supply 
of a practical poetic justice which ensures 
the marriage of the almshouse girl to the 
hero of the tale, and makes out of the hero 
the sheriff of the self-same county where 
the regulators had nearly had him convict¬ 
ed for horse-stealing.” [Nation. 15 

COUNTRY BY-WAYS [by S.. O. Jew¬ 
ett, Houghton , 1881.] “Miss Jewett her¬ 
self seems sure only of catching and holding 
some flitting movement of life, some frag¬ 
ment of experience which has demanded 
her sympathy. One of the stories, indeed, 
Andrew’s Fortune has a more delib¬ 
erate intention, and we are led on with 
some interest to pursue the slight turns of 
the narrative; yet in this the best work is 
in the successive pictures of the village 
groups in the kitchen and at the funeral. 
It would be difficult to find a formal story 
which made less draft upon one’s curios¬ 
ity than Miss Becky’s Pilgrimage , 
yet one easily acquires a personal regard 
for Miss Becky herself. Miss Jewett’s 
sketches have all the value and interest of 
delicately executed water-color land¬ 
scapes; they are restful, they are truthful, 
and one is never asked to expend criticism 
upon them, but to take them with their 
necessary limitations as household pleas¬ 
ures. The sketches and stories which 
make up the volume vary in value, but 
they are all marked by grace and fine 
feeling; they are thoroly wholesome; 
they have a gentle frankness and rever¬ 
ence which are inexpressibly winning, 
when one thinks of the knowingness and 
selfconsciousness and restlessness which 
by turns characterize so many of the eon- 


6 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


tributions by women to our literature.” 
[Atlantic. 19 

COUNTRY DOCTOR, A. [by S.. O. 
Jewett, Houghton , 1884.] “It is a 
positive pleasure to think how many 
young voices will be reading aloud, 
this summer, Miss Jewett’s delightful 
sketch of ‘A Country Doctor.’ We say 
sketch, for tho the book has been heralded 
as a novel, it is as strictly a sketch as any 
of those which have won for her a now 
most enviable fame. Miss Jewett’s work 
is as purely and finely New England as 
Whittier’s poetry. Her instinctive refine¬ 
ment, her graceful workmanship, place 
her second only to Mrs. A.. (Thackeray) 
Ritchie. Her country doctor is unmistak¬ 
ably a loving portrait from life. We like 
him and his friend all the better for a rem¬ 
iniscence of the Doctor May and the Doc¬ 
tor Spencer of 30 years ago. Not that they 
are in the least copies—only examples of 
the same type. By the side of Doctor Les¬ 
lie is a most gracious figure, firsta wayward 
child, then a girl of eager heart and steady 
will. So far as the story follows the 
thread of her fortune, and develops her 
character, it might be called a novel; but 
plot in the ordinary sense it has none. . . At 
the close, the heroine, looks forward to no 
happiness of wife or mother, but to the 
profession—still unusual, tho no longer is¬ 
olated—for which she had patiently trained 
herself in medical school and hospital ” 
[Nation. 17 

COUPON BONDS, [by *J: T. Trow¬ 
bridge, Boston : 1873.] “We think the 
best of Mr. Trowbridge’s stories, in the 
new volume of them just published, is 
The Man Who Stole a Meeting-House, 
which we suppose our readers have not 
forgotten. It deals, like all the others, 
with the rustic character of New Eng¬ 
land, bringing out here and there its lurk¬ 
ing kindness and delicacy, but impressing 
you chiefly with a certain sardonic hard¬ 
ness in it,—a humorous, wrong-headed 
recklessness, which Mr. Trowbridge has 
succeeded in embodying wonderfully well 
in old Jedworth. The story is as good as 
the best in this sort of study, and in struc¬ 


ture it is as much more artistic as it is less 
mechanical. In some of the other tales 
the coming coincidence and surprise may 
be calculated altogether too accurately: 
all is plotted as exactly as if for the effects 
of a comedy. This is true in a degree of 
Coupon Bonds, which is such a capital 
story, and so full of human nature; and it 
is almost embarrassingly true of Archi¬ 
bald Blossom, and of Preaching for Sel- 
wyn. Mr. Blazafs Experience, The 
Eomance of a Glove, Nancy Blynn’s 
Lovers, and In the Ice , are better; but 
none are so good as The Man Who Stole 
A Meeting House, which for a kind of 
poise of desirable qualities—humorous con¬ 
ception, ingenious plot, well-drawn char¬ 
acter and a naturally envolved moral in old 
Jed wort’s disaster and reform — is one of 
the best New England stories ever written, 
to our thinking. They are all inviting 
stories; they all read easily.” [Atlantic. 18 
COUSIN POLLY’S GOLD MINE, [by 
A.. E. ( ) Porter: Harper, 1879.] 

-^‘The brothers loved the same sweet 

girl, Alice Leigh, and the more favored won 
her; but the fortune which she brot her 
husband melted away. Their orphaned 
children became the wards of their patient 
and large-hearted uncle; and there is ad¬ 
mirable poetic justice and a really artistic 
convergence of different lines of destiny 
in the end, where poor, miserly Polly 
finds death in her fulfilled desires by fall¬ 
ing into the pit excavated by the first 
miners on her old farm, and the wealth 
which she had clutched so blindly comes 
by natural inheritance to Alice’s children 
and their adoptive father, and comes just 
in time to lift from the brave shoulders of 
the true hero of the tale the burden which 
must soon have crushed them. It must be 
confessed, however, that this plot looks 
better in outline than with the author’s 
filling. There is absolutely no action in 
the book, and the conversations, especially 
of the more refined characters, are as prig¬ 
gish and impossible as the situations are 
simple and veracious.” [Atlantic. 19 
DEEPIIAVEN [by S.. O. Jewett, 
Boston, 1877.] “The gentle reader of 




NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


this magazine [Atlantic] cannot -fail 
to have liked, for their very fresh and 
delicate quality, certain sketches of an 
old New England seaport, which have 
from time to time appeared here during 
the last 4 years. The first was ‘Shore 
House,’ and then came ‘Deepliavcn 
Cronies’ and ‘Deephaven Excursions.’ 
These sketches, with many more stud¬ 
ies of the same sort of life, as finely 
and faithfully done, are now collected into 
a pretty little book called ‘Deephaven,’ 
which must, we think, find favor with all 
who appreciate the simple treatment of 
the near-at-hand quaint and picturesq. 
No doubt some particular seaport sat for 
‘Deephaven,’ but the picture is true to a 
whole class of old shore towns, in any one 
of which you might confidently look to 
find the ‘Deephaven’ types. It is sup¬ 
posed that two young girls—whose young- 
girlhood charmingly perfumes the thot 
and observation of the whole book—are 
spending the summer at ‘Deephaven,’ 
Miss Denis, the narrator, being the guest 
of her adored ideal, Miss Kate Lancaster, 
whose people have an ancestral house 
there; but their sojourn is used only as a 
background on which to paint the local 
life : the 3 or 4 aristocratic families, sever¬ 
ally dwindled to 3 or 4 old maiden ladies; 
the numbers of ancient sea-captains cast 
ashore by the decaying traffic; the queer 
sailor and fisher folk; the widow and old 
wife gossips of the place, and some of the 
people of the neighboring country. These 
are all touched with a hand which holds 
itself far from every trick of exaggeration, 
and which subtly delights in the very tint 
and form of reality; we could not express 
too strongly the sense of conscientious 
fidelity which the art of the book gives, 
while over the whole is cast a light of the 
sweetest and gentlest humor, and of a 

sympathy as tender as it is intelligent. 

Bits of New England landscape and 
characteristic marine effects scattered 
throuout these studies of life vividly local¬ 
ize them, and the talk of the people is 
rendered with a delicious, fidelity.” 20 
DESMOND HUNDRED, The [by J.. 


(G.) Austin, B’n,1882.] “Tt is hard to say 
whether this is intended as a novel of 
American life or a religious novel, or 
both. So far as the plot goes, it might 
be of almost any country; but the 
scene is laid partly in New Eng¬ 
land, and most of the characters are New 
England people, and the author has a 
high estimation of New England. Still, 
the hero of the book is a clergyman, who 
renounces the woman he loves and allows 
his brother to marry her, and there is a 
great deal about religion in the course of 
the story. Several of the characters, 
again, are English, and there Is something 
in the tone of the religion and of the love 
which is not American. The author is 
evidently very much at home in New Eng¬ 
land, and the more commonplace New 
England characters and dialog in the book 
are very good. The story opens with the 
preparations for the reception in a New 
England village of the popular Dr. Manoah 
Sampson, who is bringing home his wife. 
The novel, altogether, is above the aver¬ 
age in the drawing of character, but in 
plot is rather weak, and in places vague.” 
[Nation. 21 

DEV AULT’S MILLS [by C : II: Jones ; 
Lippincott, 1S76.] “This novel is well- 
written, and displays here and there 
pleasant touches of humor and intelligent 
observation, but it lacks the compactness 
which is needed for the successful treat¬ 
ment of a story. The development of the 
plot runs on too calmly, and the conver¬ 
sations of the characters, altho natural 
enuf in themselves, sometimes give too 
little aid in bringing matters to the neces¬ 
sary crisis, so that the eager reader of 
novels, accustomed to more fiery drafts, 
will perhaps find this tale pall upon 
his taste.” [Nation. 22 

DOCTOR OF DEANE, Tiie [ by M.. 
(Towle) Palmer, Lothrop, 1888.] 
“A bright and well-written little book. 
Within its modest limits it holds an un¬ 
commonly distinct and agreeable group of 
portraits. Uncommon, too, is the percep¬ 
tive quality which has taken note of in¬ 
numerable subtleties of thot and feeling 


8 



NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


under the conditions of daily life, and set 
them down with a faithfulness that is in 
touch with nature, yet which never be¬ 
comes odious by over-analyzing. W e are not 
perfectly sure that every feminine reader 
will agree with the author in writing down 
modesty as Dr. West’s most impressive 
trait, but we are sure that there will be 
found in the book a happy alternation of 
the thots which sparkle and those which 
softly shine.” [Nation. 23 

DR. BREEN’S PRACTICE [by W: D. 
Howells, Boston, 1881.] “Is a novel 
of New England life, in which Mr. 
Howells shows his usual skill and humor, 
and more than an ordinary amount of 
ingenuity. The plot is founded on an 
idea which has, so far as we know, 
not been utilized in fiction before. Dr. 
Grace Breen is a young New England girl, 
who represents what Mr. Howells seems to 
think the modern form of Puritanism, 
this ancient faith taking in her a moral 
rather than a religious form, and making 
her conscience sensitive as regards all her 
relations with fellow-creatures to a degree 
unknown in parts of the world unaffected 
by Puritan traditions. The scene of the 
story is laid in a seaside “resort” known as 
“Jocelyn’s,” where may be found the usual 
New England summer boarding-house, 
with its visitors from all quarters. Grace 
Breen having had some years before an 
unfortunate love affair, in which she had 
been badly treated by her lover, has adopt¬ 
ed the practice of medicine, much as other 
women enter convents or go out as mis¬ 
sionaries—tho Mr. Howells intimates that 
this is putting the case in rather an exag¬ 
gerated way; but at any rate, she has 
chosen this work with the intention of 
giving her life to it and supporting herself 

by it.” [Nation. 25 

EARNEST TRIFLER, AN [by M.. A. 
Sprague, Houghton , 1879.] “This is a 
clever little love-story of a sort that a 
clever woman knows best how to tell. 
Rachel Guerr.in, the heroine, is a New 
England girl, living in a secluded vil¬ 
lage, throu which a railroad has been 
laid out. Two engineers come to the 


place, representing two types familiar to 
novel readers—one the strong, earnest 
man, given to deep and overwhelming 
feelings, but poor at the expression of 
them; the other a gay young butterfly, 
charming iu conversation, agreeable to 
women from his gayety and society, but 
more given to expression than to emotion. 
Both of these gentlemen fall in love with 
Rachel, and of course, the strong, earnest 
man married her. Rachel Guerrin is an 
attractive picture of a girl, brot up, as so 
many girls are brot up nowadays, in a re¬ 
mote and sequestered corner of the world, 
but admitted, throu literature of all kinds, 
to a vicarious knowledge of men and 
cities. Her relations with her two lovers 
are well described, and her conversation 
is always bright. Indeed, it is in her dia¬ 
log that Miss Sprague is at her best. Her 
conversations are always lively, if possi¬ 
bly-a •little too witty for real life. The 
other characters are not good. The strong, 
earnest man does not justify the intense 
interest he excites in Rachel’s breast, and 
tho Halstead is much better, it is really 
Halstead in the act of flirting with Rachel 
which makes up most of his character as 
we see it. These flirtations are certainly 
admirable, but flirtation does not alone 
make a novel.” [Nation. 25 

EAST ANGELS [by C. F. WOOLSON, 
Harper , 1886.] In this there is nothing 
so fresh or remarkable as are the opening 
scenes of Miss Woolson’s Anne.’ The 
movement is intentionally languid, fitted 
to the surrounding. Evert Winthrop 
and Margaret Harold, the people to 
whom Miss Woolson devotes most space, 
are presented full blown, past the 
period of growth, and the period of decay 
still remote. Their completeness is 
immediately recognized, their stability 
taken for granted, and it is impossible 
to stimulate concern about what they 
do or think or feel. They are so essential¬ 
ly of those to whom life brings no severe 
tests, no moments when character reels 
before temptation, that the emotional cri¬ 
sis to which they are subjected in the lat¬ 
er chapters provokes neither fear nor 


9 



NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


doubt. We know they will come out 
without damage, and bloom on serenely 

for many a day.Garda Thorne is the 

perpetual bud. On first acquaintance she 
piques curiosity; even if the matter does 
not suggest possibilities of development, 
the reader instinctively looks ahead with 
expectation. But Garda passes throu the 
fires of life, her selfishness unimpaired, her 
capacity for sleep undiminished, and, tho 
it is not mentioned, probably fulfills the 
only possibility of young girlhood which 
we all scorn to contemplate—grows fat. 
In the delineation of these characters, it is 
clear that Miss Woolson understands what 
she means to do, and the fault is compara¬ 
tive worthlessness of design, not defective 
execution. In representing the passion¬ 
less, shallow, selfish Garda as a child of 
the South and of Nature, she is perhaps at 
fault; aside from her habit of dozing in 
the sun, Garda is a dauter of the long- 
conventionalized North. The numerous 
passages descriptive of Florida are the 
most agreeable and valuable in the book. 
They are faithful, often vivid, and occa¬ 
sionally reproduce the fantastic impression 
made upon the imagination by the most 
unreal and elusive of landscapes.” [Na¬ 
tion. 26 

EASTFORD [by G: Lunt, Putnam. 
1855.] New England. 27 

ECHO OF PASSION, An. [by G: P. 
Lathrop, Houghton. 1882.] •. .“There are 
passages of strong dramatic power, which 
move one by the very slightness of the 
means employed; and the conversations, 
while charged with meaning, are not of 
the teasing character of those in the for¬ 
mer book, because they come from a more 
real and intense feeling. But the strength 
of the work is in its masterly development 
of the central ‘motif’; its unhesitating dis¬ 
closure of the subtle self-deceit of Fenn, 
making the lie tell itself throu the story; 
its fine rendering of the noble wife and of 
the half-willing temptress, whom we may 
honorably love and admire if we do not 
happen to be in Feun’s situation. The ebb 
and flow of the passion, its apparent 
checks yet real accumulation of power, 


are true to nature, and the whole story is 
remarkable for the skill with which very 
natural and probable incidents are made 
to present a spiritual conflict.” [Atlantic.28 
ELSIE YENNER [by O. W. Holmes, 

Boston: 1861.]-“There is no need of 

our analyzing “Elsie Vernier,” for all our 
readers know it as well as we do. But we 
cannot help saying that Dr. Holmes has 
struck a new vein of New England ro¬ 
mance, and the character of the heroine 
has in it an element of mystery; yet the 
materials are gathered from every-day 
New England life, and that weird bor¬ 
der-land between science and speculation 
where psychology aiid physiology exer¬ 
cise mixed jurisdiction, and which rims 
New England as it does all other lands. 
The character of Elsie is exceptional, but 
not purely ideal. In Dr. Kittredge and 
his “hired man,” and in the principal of 
the “Apollinean Institoot,” Dr. Holmes 
has shown his ability to draw those typical 
characters which represent the higher 
and lower grades of average human nature; 
and in calling his work romance he 
quietly justifies himself for mingling other 
elements in the composition of Elsie and 
her cousin. Apart from the merit of the 
book as a story, it is full of wit, and of 
sound thot sometimes hiding behind a 
mask of humor. Admirably conceived are 
the two clergymen, gradually changing 
sides almost without knowing it, and hav¬ 
ing that persuasion of consistency which 
men feel, because they must always bring 
their creed into some sort of agreement 
with their dispositions.” [Atlantic. 29 
END OF THE WORLD, The [by E: 
Eggleston, N. Y., Jucld , 1872.] “It is 
a pleasure to turn to so simple-mind¬ 
ed and innocent a story as Mr. Eggleston’s 
“End of the World,” which is announced 
on the title-page to be a love story, but 
which is much more and much better in 
its way than that. There are the young 
man and the young woman who are per¬ 
secuted and separated by heartless par¬ 
ents; they also add to their sufferings by 
misunderstanding one another; there is 
the fever, which is epidemic with heroes; 


10 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


and finally, of course, Ihey are married. 
This is all told pleasantly enuf, and in a 
way which every one will be glad to see 
in a story which does not pretend to any 
deep searching of the human heart, but 
which will, we have no doubt, be very 
popular among people who do not read 
most of the best and a multitude of the 
worst novels every year. But better than 
that, to our thinking, is the greater novel¬ 
ty of the scene to which the author intro¬ 
duces us, and the amusing people—Second 
Adventists, Western Methodist exhort- 
ers, confidence-men, and so forth—whom 
he has sketched in a very lifelike way. 
The plot of the story is certainly hackney¬ 
ed, but there is considerable freshness in 
the telling of it, and, above all, the author 
deserves praise for the good-nature and 
cheerfulness, and the lack of false senti¬ 
ment. which together make the story bet¬ 
ter than would its literary merits alone.’ 
[Nation. 30 

FARNELL’S FOLLY [by J: T. Trow¬ 
bridge, Lee Shepard, 1885.] “The 
facility with which Mr. Trowbridge 
always writes is as apparent as ever in 
his latest novel. The 400 and more 
pages which are required to tell the story 
of‘Farnell’s Folly’ were, we may be sure, 
not written painfully, nor yet carelessly; 
but there is a rapidity about the style that 
makes the movement of the story seem 
tedious by contrast. As now and then 
happens with facile writers, the points are 
often so much insisted on that the charac¬ 
ters, while not seemingly exaggerated, 
still fail to seem natural. Then, a reader 
objects even to the apparent assumption 
that he has no discernment whatever. 
The story is essentially American in its 
qualities. The people of Waybrook, their 
environment and traditions, are all in 
keeping with a village of Western New 
York. Ward Farnell, whose magnificent 
house was to have been his pride and be¬ 
came his folly, is a type of the successful 
American, Ipd on to financial ruin by love 
of display; and some of the minor char¬ 
acters are excellent from the way in 
which the limitations of their birth and 


nurture are portrayed, while their real 
worth and honesty are not sunk out of 
sight. Tho the story is American, it is 
not new; both the incidents and the 
characters have an exasperating way of 
seeming to have been already encount¬ 
ered somewhere. This is ordina¬ 
rily a mark of commonplaceness: yet it 
may not be disagreeable to many who 
have grown tired of the strained effort for 
novelty in much of the current fiction — the 
painful search for queer types and unused 
material — to read a novel in which imagi¬ 
nations are not asked to leave the earth, 
nor even to dwell in strange places.” [Na¬ 
tion. 31 

FIRST LOVE IS BEST [by “Gail 
Hamilton,” Estes & Lauriat , 1877.] 
“The thesis of the title is established by 
the record of the life of a young girl who, 
after being disappointed by finding one be¬ 
trothed lover worthless, marries a much 
better man, and in time learns to love him. 
The story is told with considerable skill 
and, of course, with abundant humor. It 
is surprising to see how a writer 
whose shrewishness — if we may be allow¬ 
ed the term—has become notorious, should 
be able to write a story so full of good- 
humored satire and real sentiment. It is, 
of course, not a great novel, but it is 
bright and readable.” [Nation. 32 

FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS [by H. 
W. Chaplin, Little tO Brown , 1SS8.] 
“The time is not lost which is spent in 
making the acquaintance of the characters 
in these ‘Stories of New England Life,’ 
They may be plain people, without ro¬ 
mance or legends of any sort, without any 
tendency towards introspection or fine 
discrimination in the matter of motives or 
spirituality; but they have a firm hold on 
the essentially worthy things in life and 
character. It is a hold which they main¬ 
tain by faith, and which serves them throu 
every-day trials and keeps them up to a 
high level of truth and right. The stories 
are excellent as stories; they are fine in 
the simplicity and quietness of their tone. 
Their interest is unstrained and natural as 
can be, yet it is always sufficient. They 


11 


NOVELS OE AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


■*> 


are subdued without being dull; they are 
telling and sincere.” [Nation. 33 

FOE IN THE HOUSEHOLD, The [by 
Caroline Chesebro; Boston; 1871.] 
“To those who read Miss Chesebro’s 
beautiful story as it appeared from month 
to month in these [Atlantic’s] pages, we 
need not say much in its praise; for 
its charm must have been felt already. 
To one thinking, it deserves to rank with 
the very best of American fictions, and is 
surpassed only by Hawthorne’s romances 
and Mrs. Stowe’s greatest work. It has a 
certain advantage over other stories in the 
freshness of the life and character with 
which it is employed; but it required all 
the more skill to place us in intelligent 
sympathy with the people of the quaint 
sect from whom most of its persons are 
drawn. It is so very quietly and decently 
wrot, that perhaps the veteran novel-read¬ 
er, in whom the chords of feeling have 
been rasped and twanged like fiddle-strings 
by the hysterical performance of some 
of our authoresses, may not be at once 
moved by it; but we believe that those 
who feel t realities will be deeply touched. 
Delia Holcombe, in her lifelong expiation 
of her girlish error, is a creation as truth¬ 
ful as she is original; and in her sufferings 
throu her own regrets, the doubts of her 
unacknowledged dauter, the persecutions 
of Father Frost, the unsuspicious tender¬ 
ness of her second husband, all the high 
ends of tragedy are attained; and the trag¬ 
edy is the more powerful since in time it 
has become a duty rather to hide than to 
confess her deceit. No book of our time 
has combined so high qualities of art and 
morals with greater success than “The 
Foe in the Household,” for which, in the 
interest of pure taste and sentiment, we 
could not desire too wide a currency.” 31 
FOR THE MAJOR [by C. F. Woolson, 

Harper , 18S3.]-“We do, however, feel 

very weel acquainted with Mrs. Carroll 
and the Major, who are the chief person¬ 
ages of the book, living in a mountain 
vilkige, presumably in North or South 
Carolina. Mrs. Carroll is a woman well 
on in years, who masquerades as a young 


and childlike wife.. .It is not very difficult 
for his wife to support the character, 
which she does with great adroitness. The 
reader might imagine that her disguise 
was to be stripped from her finally, and 
that she was to be turned out of the story 
in her true character, whereas all the dis¬ 
illusionizing is done deliberately by her¬ 
self, and it is seen that the one cause for 
the deception is its justification; for love 
was at the bottom of it: the love first of a 
woman grateful to the man who came for¬ 
ward to the relief of her and her child, 
and then the same love and gratitude tak¬ 
ing the form of devotion to the failing hus¬ 
band. The deception, in which the dauter 
joins, is all for the Major, and when the 
Major dies the mask falls.” [Atlantic.] 
The charm of the story,—the quiet, placid, 
refined village life, is hardly indicated in the 
foregoing extract. 35 

FROM FOURTEEN TO FOURSCORE 
[by Mrs. Susan W. Jewett, Hurd dc 
Houghton, 1871.]—In the “introduction” 
to this interesting story, the author in¬ 
forms us that she wrote it “to please her¬ 
self,”—an assertion well sustained throu- 
out the book, in the character which she 
has chosen to personate. It might easily 
pass for the transcript of an old lady’s 
journal and reminiscences, written “with 
no view to publication,” but to gratify a 
favorite grandchild. We do not mean to 
imply that it is not also likely to please 
others, but simply that it is not written 
in the interest of any theory, or party, or 
sect—that it is not didactic—that it cannot 
properly be classed among the “religious” 
novels, tho there is a good deal of religion 
in it—that it can hardly be called even a 
“love story,” if that means following the’ 
checkered fortunes of two persons throu 
many fears and joys, doubts and hopes, to 
the inevitable conclusion. It is rather a 
collection of several love-passages, with 
quite the usual amount of cross-purposes, 
united, however, by the author’s personal¬ 
ity, to whose own story the main interest 
of course belongs. It belongs rather to the 
“quiet” class of novels than the excitiug, 
vet it never degenerates intodulness. The 


12 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


mere scenery of the narrative is of the 
slightest kind, and somewhat too vague, 
perhaps; but this is far from being the 
case with the sketches of character, which 
really form the true and permanent value 
of the book, and are positive additions to 
our spiritual portrait-gallery. Prominent 
among these are “Aunt Rebecca,” and 
“Aunt Content”—the two most interesting 
persons in the book, unless the narrator 
herself be an exception. Both of these 
have had their lifelong trials, arising in 
each instance from disappointed love. 
But in the one case the lover’s death 
brot the disappointment, and in the other 
his mariage. There is also a similarity in 
the two cases, in that both have sisters 
for rivals; but with the difference, that the 
sister of Aunt Rebecca is a successful 
rival, and the sister of Aunt Content a dis¬ 
appointed one. Yet the former could be 
called successful only in a very literal and 
worldly sense. She is aware that her 
husband has given her but “a divided 
heart,” the unmarried sister being still the 
most deeply loved. And in her treatment 
of this very difficult relation, the author 
seems to us to have shown rare delicacy 
and truth of sentiment.” [Nation. 30 
GEMINI, [ Boberts, 1S78.] “....An 

extremely simple and sorrowful little 
story, [Scene in New Hampshire] evi¬ 
dently by a new author, but bearing a 
stamp of quiet veracity which is allied 
more nearly than we sometimes think to 
the highest art. It is the humblest of 
tragedies, and has nothing to do with 
“terror,” and little with passion; but it 
does purify the heart by “pity,” as we 
read. The style reveals, on every page, 
that deep and ample but hardly conscious 
culture, still oftenest attained in solitary 
places by those who go much to books for 
their own sake only, and not because the 
demands of conversation or the customs of 
a social clique require it.” [Atlantic.] “It 
is a singularly touching and realistic pic¬ 
ture of village life. Along with the bare, 
barren, narrow, and forbidding side of 
New England life and character, it depicts 


the homely domestic virtues, the high 
sense of duty, the loyalty to conviction, 
the quiet persistence, the tireless struggle 
against opposing circumstance, which have 
given l[ewEngland its moral grandeur and 
intellectual preeminence.” [Appleton’s. 37 
GIRL GRADUATE, (A) [by 0. I’. 
Woolley, Boston, 1S89.] “Is a product of 
New England culture unimpaired. Every¬ 
thing is decorous and honest and uplifting, 
Tmd there is either no grammar at all, or a 
great deal of it, very inflexible and stately. 
The girl graduate has the grammar, while 
her family and friends have it not; and one 
of the problems which, at IS, confront her 
is how she may gain an entrance into 
those charming circles where it is believed 
to be pretty evenly distributed. Maggie 
Dean is the dauter of an illiterate machin¬ 
ist, and would be described by an English¬ 
man as “a vouug person educated above 
her station.” To Maggie’s father, as to 
thousands of American fathers of the same 
class, the English phrase is meaningless. 
They are accustomed to knowing that their 
women are finer than they, and in their 
hearts, are proudest when “one of the 
girls” is like unto the owl for wisdom and 
the bird of paradise for plumage. To those 
fond and guileless men she cannot have 
been educated above her station, for does 
not her education makes her equal with 
the best? It is left to the girl herself to 
find out that it does not, and then comes 
the bitter hour. In the story of the ‘ Bread¬ 
winners’, the worst consequences to a girl’s 
nature of recognition of this disappoint¬ 
ing truth are described with a stern dis¬ 
regard of popular sentiment. It would be 
pleasant to be able to believe that the 
Maggie of that famous story is exceptional 
and Mrs. Woolley’s Maggie typical; but we 
fear that the anonymous author general¬ 
ized from the wider experience, and that 
his views about the effect of high-school 
education upon the multitude were less 
rosy. Still, it is cheerful to have Maggie 
Dean purged of vulgar ambitions by the 
fire of social snubbing, and developing a 
refinement which does not always accom- 


14 


* 

NOVELS OE AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


pany the knowledge gained from books.” 
[Nation. 38 

GOOD INVESTMENT, (A) [by W: J. 
Flagg, Harper , 1S72.] “Is an account 
of life in Southern Ohio, apropos of the 
rise in the world of a bright young boy. 
The story is unaffectedly written, the ro¬ 
mance is pleasant, if not madly exciting, 
no more are the ordinary flirtations of 
other people, and we are glad to recom¬ 
mend the book as a good step in the right 
direction on the part of an American nov¬ 
el-writer. There is a good deal of truth of 
local coloring in the figure of the old man 
whose lands were the subject of the invest¬ 
ment. Not so good is the love-story, with 
its haps and changes; and perhaps the 
novel tries to contain too much, but, as 
we say, it may be awarded a word of 
praise.” [Nation. 31) 

GRAYSONS, (The) [bv E: Eggleston, 
Century Co., 1888.] “Mr. Eggleston’s 
pictures of western life are alwavs worth 
reading. In ‘The Graysons’ he has intro¬ 
duced as one of his characters Abraham 
Lincoln—the main incident of the story 
being the acquittal of the hero of a charge 
of murder throu Lincoln’s dramatic ex¬ 
posure, on the trial, of the perjury of the 
principal witness for the prosecution. The 
plot of the story is simple enuf, and is 
made the means of introducing us to Illi¬ 
nois life of a generation ago or more. 
The dialect is carefully given, and most of 
the characters drawn with distinct individ¬ 
uality and interest. The Graysons them¬ 
selves, Tom, Barbara, and the old mother, 
are very well portrayed, and the attempts 
to lynch Tom furnish lively reading. Mr. 
Eggleston would probably disclaim all in¬ 
tention to idealize, nevertheless he con¬ 
trives to infuse a dash of romance into 
early Western life which possibly is not 
true to nature, yet is not on that account 
necessarily reprehensible.” [Nation. 40 
GREAT DOCTOR, (The) [by Alice 
Cary] “is one of the best stories of life 
in the middle West ever written.” 
[Howells. 41 

GREAT MATCH, (The) [by M.. 1\ 


(Wells) Smith, Roberts, 1S77.] “This 
book is full of spring and summer coloring, 
apt to the approaching season on the eve of 
which it appears,and it drops from the press 
with an inspiring click as of the first base¬ 
ball which flies from the bat, announcing 
the end of winter. It is in fine, a bright, 
attractive story of base-ball matches, and 
matches of a more gentle sort, agreeably 
peppered with villainy in small quantities, 
so as to sustain the relish. But there is so 
much clever observation of character, such 
charming description of nature, such ex¬ 
cellent humor hightened by refinement, 
that the book—dealing with a popular 
American theme hitherto untouched—is a 
notable triumph of current story-writing.” 
[Atlantic. 42 

GUARDIAN ANGEL, (The) [by O. 
W. Holmes, Fields, 1867.] 43 

HANNAH THURSTON [by Bayard 

Taylor, Putnam , 1864.] “-a very 

remarkable book, a really original story 
admirably told, crowded with lifelike char¬ 
acter, full of delicate and subtle sympathy, 
with ideas the most opposite to the au¬ 
thor’s, and lighted throuout with that play¬ 
ful humor which suggests always wisdom, 

rather than mere fun.Yet there are 

a dozen characters interwoven into the 
plot of this book, everyone of whom is to 
the reader as a remembered friend, a living 
and moving figure, whom he can recognize 
as if he were in the flesh, whose action he 
can study, and in whom the slightest inco¬ 
herence would startle him as incoherences 
in actual life might do.Hannah Thurs¬ 

ton takes as her part the advocacy of 
woman’s rights, becomes a lecturer so 
like, and yet so different from, the Dinah 
of “Adam Bede,” and at 30 renounces 
mariage in favor of the mission she fan¬ 
cies herself called to perform. She is at 
the hight of her village influence, recog¬ 
nized by all as a woman whom it is possi¬ 
ble for men to lo.ve, yet with something in 
her beyond womanhood, when she meets 
Maxwell Woodbury, Mr. Taylor’s type of 
a man, who may be shortly described as a 
good “Rochester,” and finds her theories 


15 




ft 

NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


imperfect. The plot consists in the grad¬ 
ual victory of earthly love over Hannah’s 
dreamy imagination, the slow recognition, 
worked out with exquisite art, of the great 
truth that woman desires a place in the 
world which is not that of man’s equal 
ally.” [Spectator. 44 

HARMONIA [by Miss Olney, Mac¬ 
millan , 188S.] “The most salient feature 
of ‘Harmonia’ is its length, but, after en¬ 
during for a season, one learns to pity, and 
in a mild degree embrace, even as a so¬ 
journer in some dull village passes from 
apathy to observation, and thence to inter¬ 
est in the prosy annals of the place. ‘Har- 
monia’ disarms criticism by styling itself 
a chronicle; wisely, for there is no plot, no 
construction, no climax, but day upon day 
of little doings. The persons are chiefly 
English settlers of to-day in a wholly unre¬ 
constructed Southern State [Virginia] 
who are trying to build a town, farm the 
land, and make their fortunes. The juxta¬ 
position of English and the native blacks 
makes a contrast in races effective and new\ 
The few white Americans who appear are 
mainly “poor trash,” or swindling land- 
agents, or shirking clergymen. The ex¬ 
ceptions are one or two Americau women 
who, spite of the inevitable English ap¬ 
pointments for American women of hob¬ 
bies and divorces, are meant to be, and are, 
attractive characters. In other words, it 
is an English view of life on American 
soil; the livers being English, under the 
not unpicturesq phase of a new settlement 
in a region comparatively old. It is ob¬ 
servable that this gives the English a cap¬ 
ital chance to have the best of it, and we 
must own to sharing the wicked American 
land-agent’s regret that the foreign settlers 
should buy the land, obtain influence, and 
yet despise the privileges of citizenship. 
The wicked land-agent’s revenge even 
Americans must deplore, but it is well to 
allude to it, that those intending to read 
the book may perceive that it is not wholly 
without the scent of battle. There is bur¬ 
glary, there is kidnapping, there are 
snakes, but not to any uncomfortable ex¬ 


tent. Naturally arise the discussions of a 
thousand topics—personal, social, and po¬ 
litical—which are treated with honesty 
and spirit. The negro portraits are es¬ 
pecially lifelike, tho not from most agree¬ 
able originals. The English colony, as 
hinted, absorbs most of the merit and the 
spoils. Among its numbers are some very 
real persons, and the chronicle of their 
very real doings, told with humor and zest, 
will have an attraction for those who like 
pictures of life and manners rather than 
form and dramatic quality—pictures, let it 
be added, nearly coequal in extent with 
the original occurrences.” [Nation. 45 
HIGH-LIGIITS [by C. (Whitney) 
Field, Houghton , 1SSG.] “It is rather a 
pretty idyl, narracing how a neat-handed 
Phyllis, of rare domestic and intellectual 
accomplishments, ensnared the heart of a 
wandering knight of the pen and brush. 
It is very nice to know that intellectual 
giants on a holiday become as babes. The 
melancholy ‘Jaques’ doing‘Silvius’ unbe¬ 
known would not offer a more refreshing 
.spectacle. The sophisticated intelligence 
has some difficulty in accepting the proba¬ 
bility of such transformation, but to the 
author of ‘High-lights’ it is evidently as 
natural, easy, and positive a process as 
breathing.” [Nation. 4G 

HILLSBORO’ FARMS [by S. D. Cobb, 
1868.] 47 

HIS GRANDMOTHERS [by IT.. (S.) 
Campbell, Putnams , 1877.] “In this 
book (which surely has not a title suggestive 
of amorous frenzy) we find the grandson’s 
wife’s friend becoming engaged to the hus¬ 
band’s partner. While this concession is 
made to the tastes of the inveterate reader 
of novels, there is also a good deal that is 
really entertaining in the poor wife’s story 
of the two grandmothers-in-law who plant¬ 
ed themselves in her home. One was an 
amiable, silly creature, while the other 
was a domestic tyrant of the most virulent 
kind. She bullied her granddauter and 
petted her easily-beguiled grandson; she 
hot a pig and cow, and then put the fami¬ 
ly, excepting the grandson, on short allow- 


16 * 







NOVELS OK AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


ance of skimmed milk, making insufficient 
butter from the cream, while she sold two 
quarts of good milk to a neighbor for her 
own emolument. In a word, she exhaust¬ 
ed nearly all the methods of refined cruelty 
which have such frequent and crushing 
effect in the enforced intimacy of family 
life. The story ends with the curtness of 
one of Mother Goose’e melodies; but there 
is a good deal of humor in this amusing 
sketch which could find better employment 
in a real story. The writer has the unfort¬ 
unate gift of clear-sightedness, and at times 
she shows considerable cleverness, as in 
her description of her own character.” 
[Nation. 48 

HIS LITTLE ROYAL HIGHNESS 
[by Ruth Ogden, E. P. Dutton & Co., 
1887.] ‘‘Is a story of our New Jersey 
coast In the vicinity of New York. We 
recommend it as truthful, wholesome, and 
entertaining, and helpful in the cultivation 
not only of gooil morals, but of literary 
taste.” [Nation. 40 

HIS SECOND CAMPAIGN [ by M. 
Thompson: Osgood, 1883.] “Itsopening 
description of a secluded mountain valley, 
in Northern Georgia, and its residents 
and belongings, is a prose idyl of exquisite 
beauty, rich in the poetry and color of 
rural life, and framing a figure of perfect 
maiden loveliness. The story is told with 
spirit and vivacity, and it is affluent of 
striking situations and incidents illustra¬ 
tive of contrasted phases of the social life 
of the South and North.” [Harper’s. 50 
HONORABLE SURRENDER,(An) [by 

M.. Adams, Scribner, 1883.] “. 

The heroine is living in the village of 
Unity, beating the wings of her desires 
and expectations against the bars of a nar¬ 
row and monotonous fate. Until the age 
of 10 she has taken the ups and downs of 
life with her father, a rather discreditable 
and wholly shifty Irishman, till, finding a 
grown dauter an encumbrance, he has let 
her take up her abode with her mother’s 
New England kinsfolk, and here Mr. 
Kenneth Lawrence finds her. The story 
offers excellent opportunities, and the sit¬ 


uations are well chosen. The chief fault 
of the book lies in the character of Alice, 
who proves incapable of duty, love, or pas¬ 
sion, and has little interest or sympathy 
with life except for its value and conse¬ 
quences to herself.” [Lippincott’s. 51 
IIOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER, (The) 
[by E: Eggleston, Judd <& Co., 1872.] 
“The scene of the story is in Iloopole 
County, Indiana, ;i locality which we 
hope the traveler would now have some 
difficulty in finding, and in a neighbor¬ 
hood settled, apparently, by poor whites 
from Y’a and Iv’y, sordid Pennsylvania 
Germans, and a sprinkling of ’cute, dis¬ 
honest Yankees. The plot is very simple 
and of easy prevision from the first, being 
the struggles of Ralph Hartsook with the 
young idea in the district school on Flat 
Creek, where the twig was early bent to 
thrash the schoolmaster. He boards 
round among the farmers, starting with 
“old Jack Means,” the school trustee, 
whose son Bud, the most formidable bully 
among his pupils, he wins to his own side, 
and whose dauter, with her mot her’s con¬ 
nivance, falls in love with him and resolves 
to marry him. But the schoolmaster loves 
their bound-girl Hannah, and makes en¬ 
emies of the mother and dauter; and they 
are not slow to aid in the persecution 
which rises against him, and ends in his 
arrest for a burglary committed by the 
gang of the neighborhood, including some 
of the principal citizens of Flat Creek. Of 
course it comes out all right, tlio the read¬ 
er is none the less eager because he fore¬ 
sees the fortunate end. The story is very 
well told in a plain fashion, without finely 
studied points.” [Atlantic. 52 

HOPE’S HEART-BELLS [by Sara 
Louisa Oberholtzer, Lippincott, 1884.] 
“in spite of its romantic title, is a very 
pretty and sensible story of a rural Quaker 
family, and, besides the pleasant diction 
of the Friends, preserves their just and 
kindly spirit and their quiet ways. Now 
that the Puritan girl has had her turn in 
literature and almost vanished, no heroine 
quite so well fulfils the Novelist’s ideal of 


NOVELS OE AMERICAN COUNTRY LIKE. 


an ingenue as the Quaker maiden, for 
her very limitations are an added charm, 
making her remain forever in great part 
an unsophisticated child, seeing with the 
pure, clear eyes of wonder, reverence, and 
faith. Hope herself is a very attractive 
creation, and we are glad to have her re¬ 
tain the pretty “thee” and “thy” in her 
speech to the end of her history.” [Lip- 
pincott’s. 53 

HOUSE OF YORKE, (The) [by M.. 
Agnes Tincker : Catholic Publishing 
Society., 1872.] “This rather curious story 
has in it much good feeling, much good 
thinking, some pretty poetry in prose, 
some clever tho slight sketching of charac¬ 
ter, some very unreal and clumsily con¬ 
structed simulacra of living human beings, 
some humor, much refinement, which 
seems to have been at one time pained, 
but which attracts. As a novel, the 
“House of Yorke” is not at all or very 
little, skilful or interesting, tho there are 
some good scenes and situations. Notably 
there is a love scene between Miss Clara 
and her lover which a very old novel- 
reader will enjoy, as, indeed, he will enjoy 
most which that young lady is and does 
and says, as well as most which is said and 
done and been by her father before her. 
Those two figures stand quite lifelife, es¬ 
pecially when the young lady’s notion of 
a “Dick” is about, or the hero Carl—a 
most virginal conception, who being alive 
would be meritorious ofinstant death. All 
the Yorke family, in fact, are apparently 
taken from the life, and if they are hardly 
a well-composed and well-painted group, 
they make a very good photographic group, 
well colored. We must praise also for its 
interest some portions of the story which 
seem to us very good as transcripts of the 
thots and feelings of a child under certain 
circumstances. Fresh, sincere, and inter¬ 
esting this part of the book seems to us, 
tho here and there marked by a crudeness 
and want of reserve wliich speak of youth 
in the artist, and of art untrained hand, 
but which will not prevent her,conciliating 
the good-will of those who make her ac¬ 


quaintance. There is, however, good 
reading in this poor novel. One may read 
it with great pleasure if one is an enthusi¬ 
astic Roman Catholic; or even if one’s self 
is not an enthusiastic Roman Catholic, but 
likes to observe the “flame of sacred vehe¬ 
mence” and little sense in other people; 
and one may read it with a pleasant and 
laudable triumph and indignation, if one 
is a well-grounded protestant, and cither 
thinks the Pope of Rome a very designing 
personage or a much misguided old man. 
Our readers will find, besides these things, 
some things that are good and pleasant, 
and for the sake of these they will readily 
forgive the writer her violence of anti- 
Protestantism. As she would perhaps tell 
us in like case—she may very well be for¬ 
given, because she evidently must have 
personally experienced a very poor sort of 
Protestantism or she would never have 
turned Papist. With which piece of 
abuse in return for all that we have en¬ 
dured from her in going throu her book, 
and with an invocation of the glorious and 
immortal memory of the last King William 
but one, the Dutch traitor, namely, who 
won the battle of the Boyne, we take leave 
of our agreeable author.” [Nation. 54 
HUMBLE ROMANCE, (A) [byM.. E. 
Wilkins, Harper, 1SS7.] “These stories 
of New England country people are writ¬ 
ten with a power of characterization that 
is unusually elective. The author has 
seized upon a number of well-defined 
types—the poor girl who has “lived out” 
all her life and finally runs awav with the 
peddler; the old woman who pieces quilts 
for a living, and, fearing she has defrauded 
her employers, rips them up and does her 
work all over by mixing the pieces 
again; the girl who promised her dying 
father to pay the mortgage, and does it, go¬ 
ing without adornments and losing her be¬ 
trothed; two old women taken from their 
poor dwelling by well-meaning friends to 
the “Old Ladies’ Home,” and languishing 
in homesickness there till they finally de¬ 
sert their luxurious quarters by stealth and 
make their way back to their previous 


18 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


abode; the little old maid devoted to her 
cat, and doubting the existence of a bene¬ 
ficent Providence when he is lost—these 
are a few of the themes upon which Miss 
Wilkins employs her talent; and simple as 
they are, she casts them into forms which 
impress us by their faithfulness, their care¬ 
ful reproduction of rustic traits, and their 
recognition of the human attributes of 
love, devotion, forbearance, patience, and 
honesty, which underlie the scant, pitiful, 
narrow lives whose experiences and con¬ 
ditions she describes so well. Miss Wil¬ 
kins has a realistic touch that is singularly 
effective, and tit the same time her compre¬ 
hension of inner motives is inspired by 
the revelations of a refined imagination. 
The simplicity, purity, and quaintness of 
her stories set them apart from the out¬ 
pouring of current fiction in a niche of 
distinction where they have no [?] rivals.” 
[Boston “Literary World.” 55 

IX THE CLOUDS [by “C: E. 
Craddock,” Houghton , 1887.] “The 

author's power of realizing the ruf native 
types with which she deals is known to all 
readers, as well as that subtlety by which 
she discerns the core of sweetness and 
goodness that is in them... To be sure, 
the heroine, the beaiitiful, bewildered, 
faithful, loving, fearless Alethea, with 
that quaint and fleeting charm which we 
have learned to know in her and in her 
sister heroines, goes quietly mad, in the 
pathetic and attractive guise which insanity 
so often assumes in fiction. But we do 
not greatly object to this; young girls in¬ 
volved in such tragical coils do sometimes 
go mad. A truer character than either of 
these is the country lawyer Ilarshan, who 
is ascertained with extraordinary accuracy, 
and who lives in mind and person before 

us_ But the various groups in the 

mountaineers’ cabins and moonshiners’ 
caves, in the county court-room, and the 
“settlement” groceries, as well as in the 
mirrored vestibules of the Xashville hotels 
and the marble halls of legislation, are for¬ 
cibly and faithfully done.” [Howells. 5G 
IN THE DISTANCE [by G: P. 


Lathrop, Osgood , 1882.] “It is Mouad- 
noe which is ‘In the Distance,’ dominating 
the lives of the personages of the story, 
tho the author, aware that this is not the 
effect of mountains upon the immediate 
dwellers thereby, imports his dramatis 
personae, the keepers of a summer holiday 
and the young new clergyman of the vil¬ 
lage. This New England story is not 
uninteresting, and some of the situations 
are almost thrilling; but there was a sub¬ 
tlety in the original conception which only 
a stronger imaginative power could realize. 
The hero has a force and a nobility which 
compel belief in him; but we could wish 
that lie had been left to himself to discover 
the folly and selfishness of his very self- 
denial. Proofs of keen and delicate ob¬ 
servation are not wanting.” [Nation. 57 

IN TIIE GRAY GOTII ] “Of Miss E.. 
S. Phelps’ short stories we like most “In 
the Gray Goth,” an incident of life among 
the lumbermen of the Maine woods, very 
simple, powerful, and affecting, and of an 
unstrained human quality which the gifted 
author too seldom consents to give us.” 
[Howells] See “Men, Women and Ghosts.” 

IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS 
[by “C : E. Craddock,” Houghton, 1884.] 
“A collection of detached stories not un- 
frequently produces upon the mind the 
rather unfortunate impression that any 
one of them is more and better than all 
taken together as a whole. Not so with 
Mr. Craddock’s. True, he needed to tell 
but one story to prove his power as a sim¬ 
ple narrator, who can catch a single inci¬ 
dent, sketch in strong lines the few charac¬ 
ters involved, and throw it all in high 
relief against a broad background with a 
power of conception and of execution 
almost simultaneous. But the 8 stories 
now grouped under the title of ‘In the 
Tennessee Mountains’ present in their 
total effect something much more than 
mere short stories. We have not only one 
mountain valley, but a whole country of 
hills—not a man and a woman here and 
there, but the people of a whole district— 
not merely a day of winter or of summer, 


19 



NOVELS OE AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


& 

but all the year.... A like felicity has 
fallen to Mr. Craddock. His vivid pic¬ 
tures of the rufness and loneliness of a 
wild country are not painted for their own 
sake, but because if we know them our 
hearts will be stirred by the sorrow and 
the joy of the life that is spent there. It is 
a hard life: the men are uncouth and stern, 
at the best; at the worst, wicked as only 
borderers can be. The women are gaunt 
and melancholy: “holding out wasted 
hands to the years as they pass; holding 
them out always, and always empty.” 
But side by side with them is that strange 
miracle of young girlhood. We find it 
again and again as we find the wild , rose 
lending tender beauty to the grim story. 
It may be rather the result of the group¬ 
ing of the stories than of any plan of the 
writer, but he has enforced anew that say¬ 
ing of George Eliot’s: “In these delicate 
vessels is borne onward throu the ages 
the treasure of human affections.” The 
reader cannot forget them, for they remain 
in his thbt as a saving grace to those law¬ 
less communities. It is hardly needful to 
add that the style is admirable, with 
marked chamcteristies of its own which 
extend beyond the mere expression, and 
produce at times an effect of rhythm, not 
of words, but of thot—if such a thing 
is possible. “The ‘harnf’ that walked 
Chillowhee” has all the power of a pathet¬ 
ic refrain in music.” [Nation. 1 50 

INSIDE OUR GATE [ by O. (Chap¬ 
lin) Brush, Roberts, 1889.] “A book 
by the author of ‘The Colonel’s Opera 
Cloak’ is sure of a public, and those who 
venture ‘Inside Our Gate’ will find whole¬ 
some cheer. The book is not a story like 
the former one—in fact, it is not a story at 
all, but a chronicle of home life, such as 
must appeal nearly to all who are set in 
families, and must give to the solitary a 
sense of domesticity. One would like, 
provided one had not maltreated an ani¬ 
mal, to be shriven at the hands of so gentle 
and so humorous a priestess as presides 
over this home altar. The story of her 
housekeeping, her children, her maid-ser¬ 


vants and their lovers, her cats and dogs 
and birds, is full of naturalness and charm. 
A humorous realism gives the book its 
leading motive, altho pathos is not want¬ 
ing. The chapter describing the scene be¬ 
tween the Scotch servant, Tibbie, and her 
braw wooer, the baker, is as amusing a 
presentment of Caledonianism as has found 
its way into print.” [Nation. 60 

IS THAT ALL? [by Harriet W. 
Preston, Roberts , 1877.] “Is as slight 
as possible, altho, in a very innocent and 
gentle way, it approaches the amusing. It 
reads like the work of an inexperienced 
hand, of some one who is not overburden¬ 
ed with the results of long observation and 
study, and who yet in time may be able to 
fill out substantially the wavering outlines 
of figures introduced as human beings. 
The characters are as unsubstantial as pa¬ 
per dolls, they are visible only when one 
looks directly at them; when they are not 
just before the reader, there is only a faint 
line to denote their presence, whereas in 
some books, one feels conscious of the 
people he reads about almost as if he were 
in the same room with them. A despair¬ 
ing sense of this feebleness of touch would 
seem to have inspired the author with the 
appropriate title of the story, which de¬ 
scribes the social complications of a win¬ 
ter in an old-fashioned New England 
village. The plot, altho as transparent as 
an enigma in a jest-book, manages to be 
the means of introducing some mild social 
satire.”,. [Nation. 61 

JOHN BRENT [by Theodore Win- 
throp, Ticknor, 1864.] “The scene is 
placed in the wild Western plains, 
among men entirely free from the restraints 
of conventional life; and the book has a 
buoyancy and brisk vitality, a dashing, 
daring, and jubilant vigor, such as we are 
not accustomed to in ordinary romance of 

American life.Helen, the heroine 

of the story, is a more puzzling character 
to the critic; but, on the whole, we are 
bound to say that she is a new develop¬ 
ment of womanhood. The Author ex¬ 
hausts all his resources in giving “a local 


NOVELS OK AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


habitation and a name” to*this fond crea¬ 
tion of his imagination, and lie has succeed¬ 
ed. Helen Clitheroe promises to be one of 
those ‘‘beings of the mind” which will be 
permanently remembered.” [Atlantic. <52 
JOHN WARD, PREACHER [ by 
Margaret (Campbell) Deland, 
Houghton , 1S8S.] “The author has here 
given a picture of that “rara avis’ a logical 
Calvinist. Any real Calvinist is at this 
hour rare; one who accepts the full con¬ 
sequences of his faith always has been. 
J: Ward believed in the damnation of the 
heathen, and more, in the damnation of all 
who disbelieved in damnation—of all who, 
to quote one of his elders, were not 
“grounded on hell.” This is also professed¬ 
ly the belief of thousands to-day, who yet 
eat, drink, and are merry. J: Ward believ¬ 
ed, suffered, crucified himself, and fell a 
martyr to his faith at his own hands, in a 
fashion logical, but hardly natural. One 
must admire the sublime acquiescence and 
loyalty of his wife; yet, in following her 
course, it is impossible not to feci that the 
alloy of a little natural self-assertion fur¬ 
nishes a necessary working quality in the 
imperfect affairs of humanity, and that 
Helen Ward was nearly as great a foe to 
domestic peace from one extreme, as were, 
from the other, Psyche and Elsa of Bra¬ 
bant. J: Ward’s concerns, however, are 
not the only, perhaps not the main, inter¬ 
est of the book. The village of Ashurst 
supplies some charming scenes of country 
life, drawn with the tender grace and 
quaintness in which the poet of ‘The Old 
Garden’ dipped an earlier pen. Dr. 
Howe’s figure is an especially individual 
%)ne. He is the genial rector of the village, 
whose theology is wholly perfunctory, 
whose kindness of heart is wholly real. 
It is as impossible not to be fond of him as 
it is to feel that in any crisis he would 
prove a stronghold. Mammon has no 
temptations for him, but common sense 
has, in situations where common sense is 
a blunder, or at least a crime. About the 
village spinsters and the elderly village 
bachelor, and the loves and rivalries and 


incompleted lives of Asnurst, hangs an 
old-time fragrance, as of a grandmother’s 
rose-jar; but only a modern novelist (or a 
Greek poet) could have stated and left un¬ 
solved so many questions touching on 
tragedy.” [Nation. 03 

JOLLY GOOD TIMES [by “P. 
Thorne,” Roberts, 1875.] “Not only de¬ 
serves its title, but the further praise of 
being pronounced a jolly good book. We 
took it up without much expectation of 
reward, because country life has been a 
hard-worked theme, and many of the sto¬ 
ries about it have had nothing whatever to 
recommend them beyond the natural at¬ 
traction of the subject for city children. 
On this occasion, however, the author has 
something definite to tell. The Kendall 
children and their neighbors and play¬ 
mates live in the Connecticut Valley, not 
far from Deerfield, and we are given a 
sketch of their life during one period from 
the breaking-up of winter till the appear¬ 
ance of snow just after Thanksgiving. 
The merit of the story lies in its evident 
biographical truth. It is very plain that 
“P. Thorne” writes from memory and 
observation, and not from pure fancy. 
The result is a charming local picture, 
quite worth the attention of English boys 
and girls, as showing what New England 
life is in a respectable farmer’s family— 
plain folk, who do their own work, but 
entirely free from the low-comic variety 
of Yankee talk and manners too often 
deemed essential to the success of a New 
England story.” [Nation. 64 

JOSEPII AND HIS FRIEND [by 

Bayard Taylor, Putnam, 1870.] “is a 
book of a different kind, addressed to a 
less numerous class of readers—those who 
prefer the pleasing manner in which a 
story is told to ingenuity of plot or extrav¬ 
agance in incident. It is a very quiet 
story, indeed, of simple country Penn¬ 
sylvania life, but it never relapses into 
dullness, and it will teach the ethical pur¬ 
pose of the writer more effectually than a 
highly wrot romance could do, tho it 
were it ever so exciting.” [Scribner’s^ 


21 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


Monthly. 65 

* KAVANAGH, A TALE [by H: W. 
Longfellow, Boston, 1849.] “ — 

as far as it goes, Kavanagh is an exact 
daguerreotype of New England life. 
We say daguerreotype, because we are 
conscious of a certain absence of motion 
and color, which detracts somewhat from 
the vivacity, tho not from the truth, of 
the representation. From Mr. Pendexter 
with his horse and chaise, to Miss Man¬ 
chester painting the front of her house, the 
figures are faithfully after nature. The 
story, too, is remarkably sweet and touch¬ 
ing. The two friends, with their carrier- 
dove correspondence, give us a pretty 
glimpse into the trans-boarding-school 
disposition of the maiden mind, which 
will contrive to carry every day life to 
romance, since romance will not come 
to it.” [J. R. Lowell, in North American 
Review. 66 

KING OF FOLLY ISLAND, (The) [by 
S.. O. Jewett, Houghton , 1888.] Miss 
Jewett • -is more touched by what is 
cheery and lovely in them than by what is 
gloomy and stern. They come to her in 
idyllic shapes, if it be not a contradiction 
in terms to call the homely little dramas 
in which they figure idyllic. Her knowl¬ 
edge of New England, reveals the letter 
as well as the spirit of what is most char¬ 
acteristic therein, but somehow, as she 
reveals it, the letter is illuminated with 
the spirit. She has drawn no character 
which is not true to his or her environ¬ 
ment and temperament, which is not vital 
and individual, and which does not think, 
feel, and talk as the same person would in 
life. If her readers do not feel this, it is 
because they are ignorant of the people 
who, and the manners which, are the sub¬ 
jects of her art, not because her art is de¬ 
fective. It is affectionate, pathetic, ex¬ 
quisite. Nothing more exquisite than 
“Miss Tempy’s Watchers” was ever writ¬ 
ten. [ R: H: Stoddard. 67 

LAD’S LOVE, (A) [by Arlo Bates, 
Roberts, 1887.] This is a summer story, 
and in its way, is perfect. The scenic back¬ 


ground is given with admirable distinct¬ 
ness, the characters are all refined, the 
incident s natural, the talk, of which there is 
much, clever and amusing in a high degree. 

It is moreover, as befits a thoroly cheer¬ 
ful story, the chaff and humor of youth, 
rather than the wit and sarcasm of mid¬ 
dle age, which, even when best deserved, 
are apt to leave a somewhat melancholy im¬ 
pression. “There is a good deal of what ar¬ 
tists term ‘atmosphere’ in ‘ A Lad’s Love’— 
—a tale of summer life at Cainpobello. 
[Compare “April Hopes”]. The wonder¬ 
ful panorama of sea and sky, with a charm 
of color that always sets one dreaming of 
Mr. Black’s descriptions of the Hebrides, 
are mirrored in these pages, and the usual 
social drama of watering-place life is 
graphically pictured -. • * The story is fur¬ 
thered developed in the arrival of Mrs. 
Van Orden’s dauter, a young lady of 17 
with the aplomb of 25, to whom in time the 
“lad’s” love is dexterously transferred by 
the elder lady. The usual excursions and 
picnics diversify the progress of the love- 
making (of which there is an abundance), 
and the analysis of the emotional nature of 
a young man of 20. of fine temperament, 
ardent feeling, and deprived of a mother’s 
love, is perhaps, the finest thing in the 
book, and is so subtly and delicately told 
as to be quite worthy of Mr. Bates.” 
[Boston “Traveller.” 68 

LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK, (The) 
[by W: D. Howells, Houghton , 1879.] 
“The demure “Lady” with her uncon¬ 
scious, wild-rose freshness, has made 
friends on all sides: the book has been al¬ 
ready handed over to Art, and its good 
things not merely enjoyed, but enjoyed inP 
the fastidious and epicurean way in which 
Air. Ilowells’s writings always insist upon 
being read. It is a style that docs not aim 
at large effects, but in which a “point” is 
made in every other sentence, and every 
point tells. And there is something more 
than realism in these pictures. Never per¬ 
haps have the NeAV England provincial¬ 
isms been rendered in so attractive and 
truly artistic a manner as in the delineation 


99 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


of the heroine, where they impart an indi¬ 
viduality and a quaint half-awkward grace 
such as some British novelists have drawn 
from a use of the Scotch dialect or of a 
foreign accent. Lydia is a rare and charm¬ 
ing personation, a heroine who is distinct¬ 
ly and honestly countrified without a tinge 
of vulgarity, and who, tho taking hut a 
modest share in the conversation of which 
the book is full, never for a moment loses 
her individuality or incurs the reproach of 
tameness.” [Lippincott’s. 69 

LAND OF THE SKY, (The) [by 
“Christian Reid,” •Appleton , 1870.] 
‘trifling as it is, is pleasant reading, tho 
more as a guide-book than as a novel. The 
little band of southern youths and maidens, 
who have already seen good service in 
this author’s stories, here rest from their 
more seriouk labors and take a trip to¬ 
gether throu the mountains in and about 
the western part of North-Carolina. 
This comparatively unknown region must 
be full of interest to those who are not 
afraid of ruf fare, and it is well described, 
with all the attendant incidents of swollen 
streams, slippery rocks, and steep climbs, 
in this book. For the sentimental reader 
there is a full supply of harmless flirta¬ 
tions.” [Nation. 70 

LATE MRS. NULL, (Tiie) [by F. It: 
Stockton, Scribner , 18SG.] “The book 
is delightfully unmoral. The characters 
go their several ways, undetermined by 
any noble ends or high designs; they be¬ 
have like ordinary mortals in a world 
which is not troubled by strainings of con¬ 
science; there are dilemmas, but they are 
not the dildhiraas of a moral -universe; 
there is a logic, but it is the logic of cir¬ 
cumstance, and rewards and punishments 
are served out by a justice so blind as not 
to know her left hand from her right.... 
So we follow the inns and outs of the late 
Mrs. Null and her fellow characters with 
scarcely any incredulity or sense of the 
absurdity of their relation to each other, 
chiefly because Mr. Stockton, with his in¬ 
nocent air, never seems to be aware of any 
incongruity in their conduct.It is, 


however, when dealing with negro life 
that Mr. Stockton shows himself at his 
best. He fairly revels in this side-show 
of the world’s circus, and takes an almost 
childish delight in the exhibition of negro 
character and life. We suspect that the 
figure in the book which will linger longest 
in the reader’s mind is that of Aunt Patsy; 
and the description of the Jerusalem Jump 
with Aunt Patsy’s exit from the world 
upon that occasion, is one of the most 
carefully written, as it is one of the most 
effective, passages in the book. It is not 
strange that Mr. Stockton should feel at 
home with the negroes. They offer him 
precisely that happy-go-lucky type of 
character which suits the world of his 
imagination. They save him the necessity 
of invention, and he can abandon with 
them that extreme gravity of demeanor 
which he is obliged to assume in order to 
give an air of reasonableness to his white 
characters.” [Atlantic. 71 

LIKE UNTO LIKE [by “Sherwood 
Bonner,” Harper , 187 s.] “‘Sherwood 
Bonner’ in this, her first novel, has touch¬ 
ed upon a period in the struggle between 
North and South which has been little 
treated by novelists. The antagonists are 
represented not in the smoke of battle, 
but at that critical and awkward moment 
when the first steps towards reconciliation 
are being made. A proud but sociable 
little Mississippi town is shown in the 
act of half-reluctantly opening its doors to 
the officers of a couple of Federal regi¬ 
ments stationed within its bounds. 

Plot there is none, and of incident very 
little. Light, often sparkling, conversa¬ 
tions and charming bits of description fol¬ 
low in ready succession like beads upon a 
string. Lack of incident is atoned for by 
charm of writing, and in the vivacity of 
the scenes the reader disregards the slen¬ 
derness of the connecting thread, or per¬ 
haps forgets to look for it.” [Lippincott’s.72 
LITTLE COUNTRY GIRL, (A )[Bob- 
erts, 1S85.] “‘Susan Coolidge’ being 
the author, it is not surprising to find this 
an easy, natural, refined little story, inter- 




NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


esting without being exciting. The various 
descriptions of Newport scenery are 
graphic and charming; the graceful refine¬ 
ments of wealth and taste are pleasantly 
sketched. The books tends rather to make 
the reader feel that life without all these 
softer adjuncts is hardly desirable Per 
haps to counteract this tendency, the author 
has given to “The Little Country Girl,” a 
stronger ‘morale’ than to her wealthy 
cousins, and makes the happy ending of 
the story turn on her clear-sighted recti¬ 
tude of thot.” [ Nation. 73 

LITTLE WOMEN [by Louisa M. 
Alcott, Roberts, 1869.] “Miss Alcott’s 
book is just such a hearty, unaffected, and 
“genial” description of family life as will 
appeal to the majority of average readers 
and is as certain to attain a kind of suc¬ 
cess.” [Nation.] “These dear “Little 
Women,” Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. are 
already bosom friends to hundreds of 
other little women, who find in their 
experiences the very mirror of their 
own lives. In Part First we find them 
4 natural, sweet girls, with well-defined 
characters, which, in Part Second, are 
developed to womanhood throu such 
truthful and lifelike scenes as prove Miss 
Alcott to be a faithful student of nature. 
It isn’t ‘a la mode’ now to be moved 
over stories, but we pity the reader 
who can repress a few tears as well as 
many hearty lafs over the lives of these 
little women.” [Galaxy. 74 

LOUISIANA [ by F.. (Hodgson) 
Burnett, Scribner , 1SS0.] “A lady from 
New York, whose surroundings have been 
those chiefly of literature and art, is alone 
at a North Carolina watering-place, and 
amuses herself with a new and interesting 
type of Southern native humanity, a young 
girl of great beauty and simplicity, but 
utterly ignorant of the world in which 
Miss Olivia Ferrol has lived.... The 
pathos of the story, while there is a touch 
of unreality about it, is fine and pervading, 
while the special charm is in the pictures 
of mountain life in North-Carolina. 
The book is graceful, and if the plot is a 


trifle artificial the execution is so skillfully 
and affectionately done that we are almost 
ready to forgive the author for limiting 
herself as she has.” [Atlantic. 75 

LOVE AND THEOLOGY [ by C. P. 
Woolley, Osgood , 1888. “Mrs. 

Woolley’s novel has a very large infusion 
of theology. The theology is of the “liber¬ 
al” order, but the manner in which it is 
presented should not repel anyone, for 
the author plainly knows very well that 
religion is more than theology, and the 
spirit in which she writes is one of candor 
and reverence for all faiths sincerely held. 
The hero, Arthur Forbes, has graduated 
from the divinity school and linds himself 
no longer able to preach the Calvinistic 
creed in which he was reared. If this is 
not exactly an uncommon experience now- 
a-days, it is hardly less common a thing 
that such a divinity student should be en¬ 
gaged to a deacon’s dauter. But substance 
and character are given to Mrs. Woolley’s 
story by the fact that Rachel Armstrong 
does not, as so many do in common life, 
accept her lover and tolerate his heresy 
until manage shall have brot them into 
essential unity of belief. She deems him 
an apostate : shut in as she has been from 
the larger movements of thot, which have 
borne him away, she believes it her duty 
to harden her heart against him, and if 
nature and destiny had not been too strong 
for her resolution, neither she nor her 
lover would have maried. This strenuous 
pair, who, tlio they cannot live apart, 
never come to think alike, find a more 
common counterpart in the genial Chase 
Howard, the rector of St. Andrew’s, and 
the lively Miss Fairfax, whose “advanced” 
ideas on woman’s lot find no difficulty in 
mingling with her Broad-Church liberality. 
The curious picture Mrs. Woolley gives of 
the western church over which Arthur 
Forbes is settled bears all the marks of 
life. The author perceives the deficiencies 
of crude “liberalism,” as well as of strict 
Calvinism, and offers an expression of the 
vital faith to which both must come in the 
convictions to which Rachel at last ad- 


24 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


heres.” [Boston ‘‘Lit. World.” 7f> 

LOVE IN IDLENESS [by E. W.Ol- 
nky [Kirk], Lippincott, 1877.] “A 
number of people, young and middle-aged, 
are gathered for the summer in the beauti¬ 
ful Connecticut country house of one of 
them—a wealthy young bachelor. There 
they all fall in love. We can hardly say 
that everybody falls it love with every¬ 
body else; but it is pretty nearly that. 
Everybody is in love with some one; and 
the consequence, after agood deal of cross- 
purposing and some suffering, is half a 

dozen mariages.It is absolutely 

without plot, has hardly enuf coherence 
to be called a story, is entirely without in¬ 
cident. And yet it is very interesting 

from the first page to the last.The 

book is strongly American; but its Ameri¬ 
cans are of the most cultivated classes.” 
[Galaxy. 77 

MALBONE [ by T: W. Higginson: 
Fields, 1869.] “is a story which reveals 
in every page the charm of a scholarly and 
polished style. The characters are drawn 
with firmness and delicacy; many of the 
scenes are unusual and poetic, and the best 
of them are powerfully elaborated. 
“Hope” is a good ideal of a whole-souled, 
noble woman, strong, true, earnest, loving 
and winning love, as the sun attracts its 
planets to resolve about it. “Malbone,” so 
confidently balancing upon the extreme 
verge where unscrupulous selfishness be¬ 
comes acknowledged villainy, and so con¬ 
stantly saved from the worst consequences 
of his faults by a harmonious tempera¬ 
ment and kindly nature, is delineated with 
the delicacy and skill which so subtle a 
character demands. “Aunt Jane,” with 
her sound judgment and spicy, invigorat¬ 
ing wit, is a good offset to “Malbone’s” 
soft seductiveness, while poor little “Emil¬ 
ia,” so capricious, so passionate, and so 
beautiful, whom the author shields from 
the indignation of her friends and of his 
readers—and shows his poetic feeling and 
his art in doing so—by casting over her a 
double shield of mysterious unconscious¬ 
ness and of perfect loveliness, is a tropical 


flower planted in an ungenial clime, who 
soon throbs away her passionate, mis¬ 
placed life, and finds repose in death.” 
[Galaxy. 78 

MAN OF HONOR, (A) [by G: C. 
Eggleston, Judd, 1874.] “The scene is 
laid principally on a Virginia family 
homestead. The tale relates the adventures 
of a gentleman who, among other things, 
loses and recovers a large sum of money, 
and very nearly loses his character, throu 
no fault of his, at the same time. He is 
arrested for debt in New York; he takes 
part in a fox-hunt in Virginia; he is jilted 
by a designing Northern girl, and loves 
and maries a true-hearted Virginian, turns 
out a born journalist, and altogether gets 
himself into and out of difficulties in a 
very creditable manner.” [Galaxy. 71) 
MARGARET, [by Sylvester Judd, 
Jloberts.] “We do not propose to add 
anything to the stormy and controversial 
criticism excited by this book 25years ago. 
American it certainly is. A fair, impartial 
portrait of American society it certainly is 
not. Quaint, queer, original, minutely 
accurate in its descriptions, but often false 
in sentiment and philosophy, arid crude 
and uncouth in expression, it well deserves 
a permanent place in American literature; 
but we should be sorry to believe it, with 
all its glaring defects of both thot and 
manner, to be ‘the most thoroly American 
book ever written’.” [Harper’s. 80 

MARSH ISLAND, (A) [by S.. O. Jew¬ 
ett, Houghton, 1885.] “....Her feeling 

for rural life and her clear comprehension 
of ruralpeople were never better displayed 
than in this little story. A generous play 
of late summer and autumn radiance 
lights up its every nook and corner; it is 
mellow with warm color and odorous of 
late fruits and flowers.But all the in¬ 

habitants of Marsh Island are human and 
attractive, and the untiring industries of 
the well-ordered household soothe one like 
the rhythm of a song.The more impas¬ 

sioned side of life does not suit Miss Jew¬ 
ett so well as the humorous and pastoral; 
but each detail about her heroine is attract- 


25 



NOVELS OK AMERICAN COUNTRY LIKE. 


ive, mill nothing in recent fiction is more 
true, touching, and womanly than Doris’ 
journey to AVestmarket in the autumnal 
dawn to keep her lover at home from the 
fishing-banks.” [Lippincott’s. 81 

MATE OF THE ‘DAYLIGHT’ [by 

5.. O. Jewett, Houghton , 1884.] “Miss 

Jewett’s stories need no commendation, 
but we delay a moment to mark them as 
another example, of which there are so 
few among the works of women, of that 
careful study which finds and brings out 
what we have to call the negative side of 
life. The world is accustomed to such 
positiveness and downrightness of fact 
add motive that it does not often realize 
the force of what does not happen—the 
meaning of not doing. Of the stories 
before us, “The New Parishioner” and 
“TheOnly .Son” are striking illustrations, 
and, at the same time, are by far the most 
interesting. Miss Jewett, moreover, has 
a style, in the true sense, a manner of ex¬ 
pression, fitting and beautiful, and her 
own.” [Nation. 82 

MEN, AVOMEN AND GHOSTS [by 
E.. S. Phelps [Ward] : Fields , I860.] 
“These stories possess that peculiar quali¬ 
ty which touches the heart, the quality to 
which we refer when we say of a singer 
that she has “a tear in her voice.” Sym¬ 
pathetic and full of human kindness, there 
is scarcely one of them, however simple it 
may be, which does not contain thrilling 
or really pathetic passages. The author 
has a keen sense of humor also, and her 
style is delightfully fresh, unstudied and 
attractive. “Kentucky's Ghost ” is one 
of the most vivid and thrilling ghost stories 
we have read for many a day. “In the 
Gray Goth," “One of the Elect,” “Cali¬ 
co,” “No News,” “ The Tenth of Janu¬ 
ary.” are also excellent.” [Galaxy. 83 

MERCY PIIILBRICK’S CHOICE [ by 

11.. F. Jackson, Boherts, 1877.] “The 
style of this book is a model for study. It is 
quiet and clear and strong. Everywhere 
there is a calm and just selection of words, 
moderation and delicacy of epithet; in 
the pictures, whether of New England 


scenery or manners, a kind of gentle and 
unstudied fidelity. It is not and does not 
pretend to be a typical love story. It is 
merely the simple recital of a strange 
heart experience, and a strangely sad one. 
A woman of the richest capacities, both 
mental and afiectional, meets in her early, 
artless youth a man upon whom she some¬ 
what eagerly bestows her heart, and who 
proves only half worthy of it.” [Atlantic.84 
MIDSUMMER MADNESS, (A) [by 
E. [W.] (Olney) Kirk : Osgood, 1885.] 
“This book is most refreshing. The scene 
of the story is laid on the banks of the 
great river Delaware, and a delicious 
sense of open air, of trees-and flowers, of 
the many tinted lights of sunset, tinging 
the broad river and the sky above, per¬ 
vades the book.The author limits her¬ 

self strictly to the possible; but she gives 
us the bright side of nature—the sunshine, 

the warmth, the color which we love. 

And very pleasant it is, and very grateful 
to Miss Kirk we feel for so much that 
is delightful. The lawns of the two large 
country houses whose inhabitants form 
the ‘dramatis person®’ of the tale, slope 
down to the banks of the great river; the 
time, as the title indicates, is mid-summer, 
and the weather is perfect. The story is, 
of course, the old, old story ; of plot and 
incident it contains the minimum, and of 
analysis of character the minimum also; 
just enuf to account for the actions of the 
different persons where they are not per¬ 
fectly self-evident, and no more. But, 
altlio almost without plot or incident, the 
interest of the story never flags from the 
first page to the last.” [Spectator. 85 
MISS GILBERT’S QAREER [by J. G. 

Holland, Scribner, I860.] “-AThat 

the moral loses the story gains. Our 
author has lost nothing of that genuine 
love of Nature, of that quick perception of 
the comic element in men and things, of 
that delightful freshness and liveliness, 
which threw such a charm about the 
former writings of Timothy Titcomb. 
No story can be pronounced a failure which 
has vivacity and interest; and the volume 


26 



NOVELS OK AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


before us adds to vivacity and interest 
vigorous sketches of character and scenery, 
droll conversation and incidents, a fre¬ 
quent and kindly humor, and, underlying 
all, a true, earnest purpose, which claims 
not only approval for the author, but 
respect for the man.” [Atlantic. 8G 

MISS TEMPY’S WATCHERS, mar 
“King of Folly Island” or “Tales of New 
England.” 

MISS VAN KORTLAND [by F. L. 
Benedict : ITarper , 1870.] “is a most 
entertaining novel. Just in what particu¬ 
lar the charm lies, it is difficult to tell— 
altho, perhaps, it owes much to the happily 
chosen language in which the story is 
told. The reader is carried along so 
pleasantly, by the current of daily affairs, 
that he forgets, until the book is laid down, 
that there are some things in it which were 
trivial, not much that was unusual, and 
nothing sensational. There was no plot 
to goad us on, but, instead of the conven¬ 
tional stage-effect, there was a pleasantly 
told story of genuine men and women. 
It is a tale of American society; and our 
National characteristics and customs are 
drawn with unusual fidelity. . . . There 
is a good deal of sentiment, and here it is 
honest and refreshing because there is no 
suspicion of affectation or shamefacedness 
about it. The scene is laid in the region 
of the coal-mines of Pennsylvania, and 
the descriptions of mountain scenery— 
which are never tedious, form not the 
least interesting part of the book.” [Over¬ 
land. 88 

MRS. BEAUCHAMP BROWN [by 
J.. (G.) Austin, Roberts, 1880.] “Un¬ 
less we had read it here we should never 
have believed that life on the coast of 
Maine coidd be so exciting, stf cosmopol¬ 
itan in its scope, so thrilling in its inci¬ 
dents. There is a jumble of notabilities— 
leaders of Boston and Washington society, 
a Jesuit father,an English peer, a brilliant 
diplomatist on the point of setting out on a 
foreign mission, a Circe the magic of whose 
voice and eyes is responsible for most of 
the mischief which goes on, Anglican 


priests, a college professor, collegiates, at 
least one raving maniac, beautiful young 
girls and Yankee men and women. From 
the company, Mrs. Beauchamp Brown 
alone emerges with a distinct identity. 
• -..The Yankees are capitally done, and 
the local color is excellent. There is not 
much to be said for the other characters.” 
[Lippincott’s. * 89 

MODERN INSTANCE, (A) by W: 

D. Howells, Osgood: 1882.] “-The 

sketches of country town life in Equity, 
[Maine] the portraits of the old squire 
and his faded wife, of the humorous philoso¬ 
pher in the logging camp,of Mr. Witherby 
the journalist, whose conscience is kept in 
the counting-room; the touches which 
reveal the veneering of culture bestowed 
by a small college on a mean man; the 
rapid outlines of a lank Western village,— 
these, and many more which recur as one 
thinks of the story, remind one that the 
hand has not lost its cunning. The famil¬ 
iar glimpses of a woman’s mind, also, 
when that mind is like the upper drawer in 
her bureau, reappear in the case of Marcia; 
and the passages between her and her 
husband are new readings from the old 
story, which Mr. Howells tells so well. 

-If Marcia is more than an individual, 

eccentric woman; if she is the product of 
a life where religion has run to seed, and 
men and women are living by traditions 
which have faded into a copy-book moral¬ 
ity, Bartley Hubbard represents a larger 
and more positive constituency.” [Atlan¬ 
tic], “-We suggest that perhaps every 

reader, however good or refined, feels in 
himself or herself a resemblance to some 
one of the common American types with 

which it is filled.Asa work of moral 

fiction ‘A Modern Instance’ is unequalled. 
It is a picture of the career of a rascal of 
the most frequent American pattern. He 
is neither cruel nor a slave of his passions, 
nor has lie any desire to sacrifice others to 
himself. On the contrary, he is very good- 
natured and amiable, and likes to see 
everybody happy about him. Hut of hon¬ 
or or principle he has no idea whatever 


NOVELS OK AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


In fact, for the oldfashioned notion of 
principle he has substituted a new idea— 
that of the primary importance of “smart¬ 
ness”—i. e., of that quality which enables 
a man to get ahead of his fallows by short 
cuts, dodges, tricks, and devices of all 
kinds which just fall short of crime.” 
[Nation. 00 

MORTAL ANTIPATHY, (A) [by O.AV. 

Holmes; Houghton, 1SSG.] “ -Humor 

and kindly satire abound, and the study of 
a strange idiosyncrasy enables the novelist 
to make use of much curious knowledge. 
Maurice Kirkwood, a young man who is 
brave, accomplished, and good-looking, 
owing to a remarkable accident in infancy, 
has such a repugnance to the near presence 
of young women, that any sudden contact 
with them causes a violent derangement 
of the heart’s action, and endangers life. 
....He cherishes the hope that, as like 
cures like, some lovely woman may lift 
the curse from his life. And the curse is 
removed at last in an American village 
which he has chosen for a temporary abode. 
... .The chief attractions of the narrative 
are to be found in humorous incident, and 
in the delineation of character. In Arrow¬ 
head village, the Pansophian Society is in 
great favor among the students of the college 
and the young ladies of the institute. Two 
of these girls stand out prominent. . . The 
book is full of passages touching on the 
follies of the day, in which the geniality of 
the writer conceals in large measure the 
the severity of his satire.” [Spectator. 91 
MYSTERY OF METROPOLISVILLE 
(The.) [ byE: Eggleston; N. Y., 0. 

Judd, 1873] “is very good.Any one 

who cares for a simple story well told, for 
characters who are genuine people and 
whose talk is always amusing, will get 
satisfaction at the hands of Mr. Eggleston. 
The book is full of humor, observation, 
and a healthy spirit which is sure to leave 
a good impression. [Nation.] Scene is in 
Minnesota in 1857. 92 

NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD. [by J: T. 
Trowbridge. Sheldon & Co. 185S.] 
‘‘Parts of “Neighbor Jackwood” we 


read with sincere relish and admiration; 
they showed so true an eye for Nature 
and so thoro an appreciation of the truly 
humorous elements of New-England 
character, as distinguished from the vul¬ 
gar and l&fable ones. The domestic inte¬ 
rior of the Jackwood family was drawn 
with remarkable truth and spirit, and all 
the working characters of the book on a 
certain average level of well-to-do rustici¬ 
ty were made to think and talk naturally, 
and were as full of honest human nature 
as those of the conventional modern novels 
are empty of it. An author who puts us 
in the way to form some just notion of the 
style of thot proper to so large a class as 
our New England country-people, and of 
the motives likely to influence their social 
and political conduct, does us greater ser¬ 
vice than we are apt to admit.” [ J. R. 
Lowell in “Atlantic.” , 93 

NEW ENGLAND BYGONES [by 
“E. II. ARR”[i. e., 7?ollins] : Lippincott, 
1880.] This little volume is a record of 
life in a typical New-England farm-house 
50 years ago. The scenes and incidents 
are treated with the tenderness which 
haunts all remembered childhood in a 
pleasant and long-forsaken home. The 
aspect of the country throu the varied 
seasons, the routine of the in-door work, 
the character of the village worthies, the 
peculiarities of the village institutions, and 
the special experiences and delights of 
childhood are dwelt upon minutely and 
faithfully. The whole forms a true picture 
of New England life in the more remote 
districts, with its stern and unamiable 
features unsoftened, and its strong, hardy 
characteristics unhightened. It stirs a 
feeling of respect even while it fails to at¬ 
tract admiration, or to waken any regret 
that the ideal it illustrates has passed 
away.” [Nation. 94 

NEW SCIIOOLMA’AM (Tiie) [Bos¬ 
ton, Loving, 1878.] “has some real 
humor in it. It is the slightest of sketches, 
describing the adventures of a rich young 
girl who becomes tired of fashionable life 
in the city and takes the place of school- 


28 



NOVELS or AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


mistress in a village among the mountains. 
She meets the gifted and penniless artist 
and they marry. The author’s little hits 
at the country people and the city people 
who spend the summer in the country are 
amusing.” [Nation. 95 

NEA\ POUT [by G: P. Lathrop, 
Scribner, 1884.] “There is much careful 
study of individualities and much felicity 
of description in “Newport.” It is not so 
much a story as a picture, in which all the 
component parts must be seen at once in 
order to blend with, modify, set off, and 
subdue each other. The author has a very 
good command of his subject, and sees 
Newport in its different aspects and 
phases, with its pageants, its amusements, 
its faults, follies, and crimes,—“set about 
by its dark purple spheres of sea,” and 

arched over by its lovely skies.Mr. 

Lathrop has succeeded in producing char¬ 
acters who, without faults of art or taste, 
go throw their parts, informing them with 
a spirit at once graceful and frivolous, 
petty and generous. lie has avoided both 
the grotesque and the heroic.” [Scrib¬ 
ner’s. 90 

NEXT DOOR [by Clara L.. Burnham* 
Ticknor, 1SSG.] “The excellences of 
‘Next Door’ are not of the highest sort, 
but they areas refreshing—in the general 
lack of excellences of any sort—as a morn¬ 
ing rain in a dry season. The tone is airy 
and lightj but never flippant, while the 
story keeps unflagging pace with the style. 
All throu, one is entertained rather than 
interested; and it is very good entertain¬ 
ment, too, following the adventures of 
Aunt Ann and her cat, and the develop¬ 
ment of her nieces’ love affairs. It would 
be hard to find two more pleasant, lovable 
girls than Kate and Margery, in the first 
place, or more worthy, suitable husbands 
for them than J: Exton and Ray Ingalls, 
in the second. Then it is pleasant to 
accompany such characters throu scenes 
so naturally and admirably done as the 
girls’ boarding-house life and their vaca¬ 
tion in the country. It is a great satisfac¬ 
tion to read on in confidence to the end, 


with a tolerably safe assurance that you 
will find no straining for effect, no posing, 
nor, in fact, anything but straitforward, 
genuine work. The book is noticeable, 
equally with its other good qualities, for 
its freshness.” [Nation. 97 

NIMl’ORT [by E. L. Bynner: Boston, 
Lockwood, 1877.] “In many ways this 
belongs to the better class of light stories. 
....It is the record of a family who lose 
their money at their father’s death. One 
girl goes off to be a governess, another 
stays at home with her brother; and their 
adventures make the story, or at least they 
would have made a very readable story if 
all sorts of superfluous tragedy had not 

been lugged in.But where this fault 

does not exist the book is full of cleverness. 
The humor throuout is natural and easy; 
the people are described as a clever woman 
sees them. In a word, it must be said 
that the author has certainly shown con¬ 
siderable ability in writing this readable 
novel.” [Nation. 98 

NORWOOD, [by II: W. Beecher: 
Scribner, 1SG8] “We have felt, in reading 
this novel, that the author had a faculty 
which might be turned to pleasant account 
in writing for the stage. This notion was 
suggested less by dramatic management 
of situations, or by sustained dialog, than 
by a certain felicity in expressing the 
flavor and color of New England life in 
the talk. The range is narrow, and the 
grade is not that of the highest comedy; 
but here is representation, not mere study, 
of character, &, so far, drama. We should 
be sorry to yield this point; for it is oue of 
the few to be made in favor of the present 
novel as a work of fiction.. . -Yet all 
this is not to the exclusion of thot and feel¬ 
ing, which give delight in their play 
amongst the ins and outs of Yankee nature 
and over the varied picturesqueness of 
village neighbors and neighborhoods. It 
would be a loss not to have read that de¬ 
scription of a Sunday in Norwood, or the 
night-fishing or the nutting-party, or go¬ 
ing to Commencement at Amherst; and 
one could ill afford not to know the charm 


21) 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIKE. 


of Quaker farm-life in Pennsylvania, as it 
appears here after the fatigues of one of 
the most wearisome and exhausting 
of stories.” [Atlantic.] Norwood was 
burlesqued in “Gnaw-wood, or New 
England life in a Village, by H: W. B. 
Cher.” 09 

OLD BATTLE-GROUND, (The) [by 
J: T. Trowbridge, Sheldon, I860.] 
‘‘whose name bears but an accidental 
relation to the story, is an interesting and 
well-constructed tale, in which Mr. Trow¬ 
bridge has introduced what we believe is 
a new element in American fiction, the 
French Canadian. The plot is simple and 
not too improbable, and the characters are 
well individualized. There is a good’ deal 
of pathos in the book, marred here and 
there with the sentimental extract of 
Dickens flowers, but it is in his more 
ordinary characters that Mr. Trowbridge 
fairly shows himself as an original and 
delightful author. His boys are always 
masterly. Nothing could be truer to 
Nature, more nicely distinguished as to 
idiosyncrasy, while alike in expression 
and in limited range of ideas—or more 
truly comic, than the two who figure in 
this story.” [J. R. Lowell in Atlantic. 100 
OLD FRIENDS AND NEW [ by S.. 
O. Jewett; Houghton , 1879.] “is a 
collection of stories, all gracefully done, 
and The Lost Lover and Madame Ferry 
may be especially commended for the 
delicate fancy they illustrate.” [Na¬ 
tion. 101 

OLD HOUSE BY THE RIVER (The) 
[by W: C. Prime: Harper , 1853.] “is 
the title of a charming volume, full of 
sweet pictures of rural life, overflowing 
with tender and delicate sentiment, tlio 
free from sentimentality, and written in 
a style of exquisite purity and grace, not 
unworthy of Irving or “Ik. Marvel.” 
... .With its justly colored portraitures of 
nature, its simplicity and truthfulness of 
feeling, and its rare appreciation of silvan 
life, it can not fail to be welcomed as a 
beautiful addition to rural literature.” [Har¬ 
per’s. 102 


OLD MAID’S PARADISE, (An) [by 
E.. S. Phelps [Ward] Houghton, 1885.] 
“The old maid’s paradise is a $500 house 
which Carona Somebody, spinster, has 
built on the cliffs overlooking Fairharbor, 
and where she spends a memorable sum¬ 
mer. The trials she has with house plans 
and carpenters, the perplexities of incipi¬ 
ent housekeeping, the idiosyncrasies of 
the Pomona-like maid-of-all-work, the 
blundering kindness of brother Tom, 
the cheerful and unconscious ignorance of 
sister Sue, the vagaries of a black-and-tan- 
terrier—these elements of fun are all used 
to advantage, and as a background there 
are glowing descriptions of sea and shore 
in sunshine and storm, bits of pathetic 
•genre’ from the lives of a fisher folk, 
charming presentations of fascinating 
“types.” The book is perhaps no more 
than a trifle, but it is a trifle that could 
come only from the practised pen of an 
adept. The book has in it the zest of sea 
breezes, the light and color of summer 
days. Its humor is exquisite; its pathos 
is the pathos of simplicity.” [Boston 
“Literary World.” 103 

OLD NEW-ENGLAND DAYS [ by 
Sophia M. Damon, Boston, 1888.] “The 
insight which one gets of a phase of civiliz¬ 
ation in America which has now nearly 
passed away, throu such books as ‘Old 
New England Days’ and ‘Uncle ’Lisha’s 
Shop’, is well worth having. Even tho 
the stories, as such, are without literary 
form or finish, and could more properly be 
called a collection of anecdotes, there is 
about them the spirit of the sturdy, honest 
simplicity which has for so long character¬ 
ized the rural population of New -Eng¬ 
land and which makes one regret its 
decadence and gradual absorption, while 
the realist novel-writer is describing its de¬ 
moralization by the march of progress and 
city boarders.” [Nation. 104 

OLD SALEM, [by “Eleanor Put¬ 
nam”: Houghton, 1886.] “Not a few of 
our readers will remember a short series 
of charming papers in the Atlantic, upon 
the cupboards and shops of Salem, and 


30 


NOVELS OP AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


upon a “dame-school” there, which were 
distinguished by simplicity and freshness 
of touch, and seemed really to have absorb¬ 
ed into their sentiment the not too oppress¬ 
ive odor of antiquity which still lingers 
about the streets and wharves of that 
sleepy city. It would be difficult to write 
about “Old Salem” without entertainment: 
but the author of these papers had so deli¬ 
cate a touch, so womanly a tenderness for 
associations, and yet humor and fancy, 
and alertness in catching the artistic out¬ 
lines of character, together with such lov¬ 
ing acquaintance with the scene, that the 
pictures of‘Old Salem’which she promis¬ 
ed would have been a rare treat. Of these 
but one new one, and that a fragment, is 
added to those already published—a sketch : 
‘My Cousin the Captain.” [Nation. 105 
OLDTOWN FOLKS [ by H. (B.) 
Stowe, Fields, 1SG9.] “The story is 
slight and unsensational, but the charact¬ 
ers are admirably sketched, and the various 
scenes present a picture of New England 
life during the past century, in which the 
charm of fiction is combined with the real¬ 
ity of history. The good, warm-hearted 
grandmother, who presides with such 
genuine kindliness over her charitable 
home, a beacon of light to the unfortunate; 
Aunt Lois, so severe and well disciplined; 
Miss Mehitable, with her larger, loving na¬ 
ture somewhat repressed by sorrow and 
untoward circumstances, but only the 
more deepened and refined, it may be, 
upon that account; “Lady” Latlirop and 
her dignified husband Parson Lathrop; Sam 
Lawson, the village do-nothing, the terrible 
Miss Asphyxia—and indeed, all the char¬ 
acters of the book, are as real and living 
as any of the people, still clothed in flesh, 
whom we may chance to meet.” [Ga¬ 
laxy. 10(5 

OLDTOWN FIRESIDE STORIES [by 
II. (Beecher) Stowe, Osgood , 1872.] 
“Sam Lawson, who tells these stories, is 
doubtless the most worthless person in 
Oldtown; but compare his amusing streaks 
of God-fearing piety, his reverence for 
magistracies and dignities, his law-abiding¬ 


ness, his shrewdness, his readiness, with 
the stolid wickedness, the indifference and 
contempt of those back-woods ruffians for 
everyone else, and you will have some 
conception of the variety of the brood 
which the bird of freedom has gathered 
under her wings. To be sure, the back 
woods have long been turned into rail¬ 
road-ties and cord-wood, and Oldtown is 
no more, but this only adds to the interest 
and value of true pictures of them. Mrs. 
Stowe, we think, has hardly done better 
work than in these tales, which have lured 
us to read them again and again by their 
racy quaintness, and the charm of the 
shiftless Lawson’s character and manner. 
The material is slight and common euuf, 
ghosts, Indians, British, and clergymen 
lending their threadbare interest to most 
of them; but round these familiar protag¬ 
onists moves a whole Yankee village world, 
the least important figure of which savors 
of the soil and “breathes full East.” The 
virtues of 50 years and more ago, the little 
local narrowness and intolerance, the 
lurking pathos, the hidden tenderness of a 
rapidly obsolescent life, are all here, with 
the charm of romance in their transitory 
aspects,—which, we wonder, will the 
Hibernian Massachusetts of future times 
appreciate? At least this American gener¬ 
ation can, keenly, profoundly, and for our¬ 
selves, we have a pleasure in the mere 
talk of Sam Lawson which can come only 
from the naturalness of first-rate art.” 
[Atlantic. 107 

ONE SUMMER, [by Blanche W. 
Howard: Osgood , 1S75.] “The word 
“charming hardly expresses with sufficient 
emphasis the pleasure we have taken in 
reading it; it is simply delightful, unique 
in method and manner, and with a pecul¬ 
iarly piquant flavor of humorous observa¬ 
tion. The plot, indeed, is commonplace: 
a city young lady meets a city gentleman 
while summering in a New England 
village, with results dear to the heart of 
novel writers and readers. • • These de¬ 
fects, however, as well as others that might 
be pointed out, are of small moment in 


31 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


comparison with those sterling qualities 
which we have already mentioned as be¬ 
longing to the book, and with the genuine 
humor which pervades it like an atmos¬ 
phere. This humor is of rare quality— 
delicate and yet hearty, and racy without 
being in the slightest degree vulgar.” 
[Appleton’s. 108 

ONLY AN INCIDENT [by G.. D. 
LitchfielU, Putnam, 1884.] has the 
virtue of modesty which its title implies. 
The author is quite at home among the 
favored people of Joppa, [New York] 
and touches their blind self-sufficiency with 
a vivacity which is in no way allied to 
spitefulness. This thoro familiarity with 
the manners and habits of a small com¬ 
munity may perhaps account for an 
unconscious use in narrative of colloquial¬ 
isms which are often vulgar and not 
infrequently ungrammatical.” [Nation. 100 
OUR COUSIN VERONICA [by M.. 
E.. Wormley [Latimer]: N. Y Bnnce, 
1856.] “The scene is chiefly among the 
mountains of Virginia, and the char¬ 
acters are taken from the aristocracy of 
the Old Dominion. In the unfolding of 
the plot, we are, however, taken both to 
England and the Northern States, giving 
the writer an opportunity for several 
contrasts of scenery and character, which 
she uses with excellent artistic effect.” 
[Harper’s. 110 

PASTORAL DAYS [by W: Hamilton 
Gibson : Harper, 1880.] “deserves and 
will hold a distinct place in the literature 
of rural New England. His point of 
view is not that of the philosopher, nor 
even of the full-grown man humoring him¬ 
self with reminiscence; it is that of the boy 
who has never ceased to be a boy, who 
does not call up old scenes, but still lives 
in them, and whose portraiture of country 
life a generation ago is no more an effort 
than to tell the exact name of “Hometown” 
or the real name of “Amos Shoopegg.” 
This happy continuity of feeling deter¬ 
mines the style of the narrative. Its char¬ 
acter-painting is excellent, and all the 
changes and circumstances of the New 


England year are truthfully described.” 
[Nation. Ill 

PATTY’S PERVERSITIES. [ by Aklo 
Rates: Osgood, 1881.] “Extravagances 
of every description pervade this story. 
“Patty” is, of course, the heroine of the 
tale, and her “perversities” consist chiefly 
in encouraging all the lovers she dislikes, 
and snubbing systematically the one she 
does love, for no reason that can be set 
forth more concisely than the author has 
done it. The successful lover is projected 
. as a softened Rochester, but appears to the 
reader as a humdrum lawyer, resentful of 
no ill-treatment and meekly inVined to 
accept the matrimonial yoke when his 
mistress’s perversities finally suggest that 
consummation. There is a sharp young 
lady with dyspepsia, who deals in epigrams 
and is addicted to a constant consumption 
of popcorn, a bowl of which she always 
carries with her; a matron of extreme 
silliness, who directs her life by the aid of 
proverbs; a comic servant, and, Anally, 
a most extravagant mystery, whose com¬ 
plications are so intricate and the elucida¬ 
tion of which leads to so little that it is 
really difficult to tell what it is all about.” 
[Nation. 112 

PEARL OF ORR’S ISLAND (The) [by 
H. (B.) Stowe, Ticknor, 1862.] “Mrs. 
Stowe is never more in her element than 
in depicting unsophisticated New England 
life, especially in those localities where 
there is practical social equality among 
the different classes of the population. 
“The Pearl of Orr’s Island”, the scene of 
which is laid in one of those localities [the 
Maine coast] is every way worthy of her 
genius. Without deriving much interest 
from its plot, it fastens the pleased 
attention of the reader by the freshness, 
clearness, and truth of its representations, 
both of Nature and persons. The author 
transports us at once to the place she has 
chosen as the scene of her story, makes us 
as familiarly acquainted with all its sur¬ 
roundings as if we had been born and bred 
there, introduces us to all the principal 
inhabitants in a thoroly “neighborly” way, 


32 


KOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 




and contrives to impress us with a sense 
of the substantial reality of what she makes 
us mentally see, even when an occasional 
improbability in the story almost wakes 
us up to a perception that the whole is a 

delightful illusion.In the rest of the 

population of Ore's Island the reader can¬ 
not fail to take a great interest, “Cap’n” 
Kittredge and his wife, Miss Roxy and 
Miss Zephania Fennel, are incomparably 
good. Each affords matter enuf for a long 
dissertation on New England and 
human character. Miss Roxy, especially, 
is the typical old maid of Yankee-land, and 
is so thoroly loveable, in spite of her idi¬ 
om, her crusty manners and eccentricities, 
that the only wonder is that she should 
have been allowed to remain single. But 
the same wonder is often expressed, in 
actual life, in regard to old maids superior 
in education, accomplishments, and beauty, 
and her equals in vital self sacrifice and 
tenderness of heart.” [Atlantic. 113 
PETER CARR A DINE [by Caroline 
Chesebro’, Sheldon & Co : 1863.] “The 
second title of this novel, “The Martindale 
Pastoral,” indicates its design and scope. 
We think that there is no female writer in 
America, who equals her in the power of 
unfolding character. In this work she 
has made a great advance upon any of her 
previous efforts. She has a story to tell— 
interesting, if not exciting to those who 
have been accustomed to “thrilling” plots. 
Her characters are here persons who 
might really have lived in this world, and 
the phases of their development are wrot 
with the conscientious care of a genuine 
artist. Without attempting to give an 
analysis of the story and characters, we 
content ourselves by saying that the culti¬ 
vated reader will deem “Peter Carradine” 
the best American novel which has been 
written for years.” [Harper’s.. 114 
PILOT FORTUNE [by Marian C. L. 
Reeves and Emily Read, Houghton, 
1885.] “cannot be said to be strikingly 
original either in plot or situation, but the 
Nova Scotia fishing-village which makes 
the background of the novel is so well 


touched off, the local color so fresh an 
unmistakable, and the narrative so easily 
and lightly given, that the book becomes 
vivid and effective. There is little mere 
description, but a few strokes of the pen 
draw the picture for us so clearly that we 
seem to breathe the crisp air of those high 
latitudes all throu the story of Milicentand 
her lovers.” [Lippincott’s. 115 

POGANUC PEOPLE [by II. (B.) 
Stowe, Fords, 1878.] “The old New 
England rural life can hardly be too fully 
and too minutely illustrated for those who 
came too late to behold it, for the signifi¬ 
cance of that life in the fast-cumulating 
story of this nation is inestimable.” [At¬ 
lantic. 116 

PRICE SHE PAID (The) [by F. L. 
Benedict: Lippincott, 1883.] “is one 
of the author’s best, with the same ease 
in delineation of character, the same viva¬ 
cious and sparkling talk, which made “St. 
Simon’s Niece” a popular book. The little 
drama here is played out in the picturesque 
highlands of Pennsylvania, and the 
story bhiefly concerns the heroine’s 
dilemma about her lovers. There are, 
indeed, two heroines, and the effect created 
is of endless coquetries and prettinesses 
and all the irresistible ‘array of feminine 
caprices. But the best character in the 
story is Denis Bourke, a young Irishman 
who carries off the honors as hero with 
unusual dignity and reality. Mr. Benedict 
has not been carried away by admiration 
of the analytical novel of the period, and 
his characters are developed by their own 
expression of themselves.” [Lippin- 
cott’s. 117 

QUEEN HILDEGARDE [by L. E. 
(Howe) Richards: Estes & Lauriat , 
1<SS9.] “is sweet and wholesome, with a 
distinct purpose, yet without the appear¬ 
ance of “preaching”. Hildegardis Graham, 
the petted only dauter of‘wealthy parents, 
finds to her dismay that they are for the 
first time to leave her behind when they 
take a journey. Her sensible mamma, 
fearing that Hilda is getting frivolous and 
shallow in her artificial city life, decides 


33 



NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


to leave her in the country for 3 months 
with her own old nurse, now the wife of 
a well-to-do farmer. The girl, called the 
queen of her fastidious set at home, goes 
to the farm, and finds all her high breed¬ 
ing severely strained not to express openly 
her disdain at her homely surroundings. 
Preparing herself to be thoroly wretched, 
she overhears a conversation between the 
farmer and his wife, in which Dame Lucy 
tries to explain the dear mother’s plan ; 
and the girl’s wish to be some time what 
her mother wishes, grows into a resolve. 
The change comes almost too suddenly to 
be artistic, but it is very welcome, and the 
book goes on with interesting accounts of 
her life and occupations at the farm. An 
agreeable humor pervades the book with¬ 
out in the least jarring upon the sense of 
fitness.” [Nation. 118 

QUEER. PRINCESS.(A) [by F.. Eaton, 
Lothrop, 1888.] “A bright, quaint story. 
“The Princess” is a motherless little girl 
reared by an adoring circle of elders. 
Queer and precocious she is, but also sweet 
and lovable. Her playmate and house¬ 
mate, Dick, a poor boy educated and cared 
for by Miss Minerva, an eccentric aunt of 
the “Princess,” is a noble little fellow, but 
too refined for his antecedents. Various 
other child-figures add to the drollery and 
charm of the book, among whom Miss 
Flora is the greatest oddity. The story 
seems long-drawn-out, being a succession 
of scenes rather than a brisk narrative, 
and the style is peculiar; but the humor, 
good sense, and warm-hearted feeling make 
us forget the faults of the book.” [Na¬ 
tion. 119 

RACHEL ARMSTRONG, ^ “Love 
and Theology.” 

RACHEL’S SHARE OF THE ROAD, 
[by Kate W. Hamilton : Osgood. 1882] 
“The dauter of a railway king, wrapped 
in all luxury, Rachel’s heart is loving and 

her foot and hand ready.Rachel’s 

opportunity lies among the few wmrkmen 
upon the road with whom she comes in 
contact; and it is the skilful management 
of incidents, essentially melodramatic, 


such as railroad strikes, shop-burnings, 
and the like, that the great merit of the 
book is shown. To use so much of them, 
and no more, as shall bring out the individ¬ 
ual characteristics of the personages of 
the story, requires a power of reserve not 
often found out of the foremost rank of 
novelists. The story is not much more than 
a sketch, but the firm, delicate outlines, 
and clear, pure color, prove a hand which 
might succeed in more elaborate work.” 
[Nation. 120 

RALEIGH WESTGATE [by II.. (K.) 
Johnson: Appleton, 1889.] “The writer 
has evidently lived long enuf in New 
England to become thoroly conversant 
with the peculiarities of the people. She 
displays a familiarity with their habits of 
mind, their modes of speech and of living 
that gives evidence of careful research. 
The romance which connects these char¬ 
acter-pictures is of an unusual type and 
has a mystery interwoven with it which 
lifts the book out of the commonplace. 
The hero himself is an interesting study of 
individuality .equally impressed by heredity 
and by circumstances. The evolution of a 
practical man from a dreamer is skillfully 
delineated.” [Homemaker. 121 

RAYMOND KERSHAW [by Maria M. 
Cox, Roberts, 18S8.] “This story will 
surely meet with the success it well 
deserves. It is entertaining, it is helpful, 
it is sweet and wholesome; its influence is 
all for the gentle courtesies and amenities 
of life, for a wide charity and good will 
towards one’s fellow beings; it is written 
in a clear and pleasing style; and the story, 
as a story, is engaging and of unflagging 
interest...To relate liow r this young man, 
aided by Alison, had the change made to a 
farm which had been the father’s costly 
“hobby,” how the two formed and carried 
out a plan of laborious, self-sacrificing life 
there, how each of the household worked 
in his or her own way for the common 
good, how they found time and means to 
give holidays to the mill hands, who had 
loved their father, how everything pros¬ 
pered in the end—this seems to have been 


34 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


the author’s purpose.” [Boston “Literary 
World.” ' i *>2 

RECOLLECTIONS OF AUTON 
HOUSE, [by “C. Auton:” Houghton, 
1876.] “Children of a larger growth, as the 
author admits in his preface, were the 
immediate audience for which these rem¬ 
iniscences were intended. . .It would 
he an injustice to this little book to pass it 
by among the ephemeral juvenile product¬ 
ions of the year. It is more than an irre¬ 
sistibly droll family history; it is a true 
picture of the domestic life of a period 
dating two generations back.” [Na¬ 
tion. 123 

REVEREND IDOL (A) [by Lucretia 
Noble: Osgood , 1882.] “is a study of 
summer life, which will better repay 
reading than critical examination. The 
scene of the story is laid on Cape Cod in 
vacation time, when the Rev. Kenyon 
Leigh and Miss Monny Rivers have got 
nicely domiciled in a quiet boarding-house 
—the one to work on his next winter’s 
sermons, the other to pursue her rather 
solitary art-studies. The minister, tho a 
discreet and earnest man, has been hope¬ 
lessly and helplessly a “reverend idol” 
among the women of the congregation, 
and has tied to ‘the Cape’ for a few sum¬ 
mer weeks to possess his soul in peace and 
have the “usual half-holiday.” He dreams, 
poor man, that, so far as female idolatry 
is concerned, he is safely “out of the busi¬ 
ness.” Miss Monny Rivers, who has been 
more or less a reverend idol among the 
young men, and is certainly a piquant and 
charming girl, has come for a similar pur¬ 
pose. That is, she, too, would like a half¬ 
holiday from lovers.The plot being 

thus simple and old-fashioned, the scenery 
is plain and easily moved, seldom shifted. 
The reverend hero is drawn not as a rever¬ 
end, but as a hero.Given a lively spirit, 

a saucy tung, but a good heart, an artistic 
temperament, and an unbounded capacity 
of worship for the unknown and unknow¬ 
able qualities of the heroic in man, and we 
have the ever old, ever new, and ever 
delightful woman whom it is always a 


pleasure to see fall to tlie lot of a worthy 
man.” [Scribner’s. 121 

RICHARD EDNEY. [by S. Judd: 
Phillips, Sampson & Co ., 1850.] “With 
not a few faults, this is a capital book. 
For the most part, it is fresh, vigorous, 
and healthful; it is generally simple and 
natural; its domestic scenes are drawn to 
the life; and the reader sees at once that 
the whole is the result of real observation 
and of true feeling.. .It is ‘a tale, simple 
and popular, yet cultured aud noble, of 
morals, sentiments and life,’ pratically 
treated and pleasantly illustrated; and its 
hints on being good and doing good are 
such as will commend themselves to the 
intellect and heart of the heedful reader. 
The scene is laid in the neighborhood of 
an interior town in far-off Maine, upon 
the borders of one of its broad rivers, and 
in the midst of’a vast timber region, the 
characteristics of which are depicted with 
great power.” [Knickerbocker. 125 
ROCKY FORK [byM.. (II.) Catiier- 
wood, Lotlirop, 1882.] “tells the story 
of a few summer days in a little neighbor¬ 
hood of farmhouses of central Ohio long 
ago. The children are the central figures, 
but there is a due background of older 
people. The book has simplicity and 
sweet homeliness. Very rarely has plain 
country life been so faithfully described. 
It seems usually impossible to do it with¬ 
out a tinge of vulgarity, which is just 
what true American country-life escapes. 
Some fine fibre in American nature, when 
close to fields and woods and sky, keeps 
it always noble, however rude the exterior. 
If there is a hint, towards the end of the 
book, that refined manners are of their 
nature insincere, it is evidently a tribute 
to some supposed prejudice of the sort, 
not out of the writer’s own conviction. 
Her people are all graciously attractive.... 
It is useless to try to transplant the child¬ 
ren. They must be known in their own 
woods and meadows. Theirs was a bless¬ 
ed world of happy “make-believes” where 
simple pleasures yet had charm.” [Na¬ 
tion. 126 


35 




NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


RODERICK HUME [by C. W. 
Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., 1879.] 

“Somewhere in the early part of this cen¬ 
tury was published a book, half humorous, 
half descriptive, called ‘The District 
School as It Was.’ It was in striking con¬ 
trast to this “Story of a New-York Teach¬ 
er.” The scene was laid in New England, 
which gave a local quality to be allowed 
for; but, all allowance made, there is a 
mighty change in 50 years between the two 
stories. Then literature was cultivated, if 
not “on a little oatmeal.” yet under the 
sternest conditions. Short sessions, scant 
salaries, severe discipline necessary to in¬ 
duce the refractory flock to begin the ascent 
to Parnassus, were the rule, and the teach¬ 
er’s place was supposed to be held by stress 
of necessity. The times change however, 
and we change with them, and trust-funds, 
endowments, and shrewd speculation play 
a prominent part in the more recent story. 
To furnish a marketable article is the 
object of the school management, and the 
reputation and capacities of the teacher 
are points to be scored in the game. The 
under-teachers are a powerful and well- 
connected body, and school events are also 
village events. The book is vivacious, and 
the Author knows the ground he describes. 

-Mr. Bardeen, carrying his hero throu 

hope, disappointment, folly, and despair, 
brings him out with flying colors at the 
close of the book.” [Nation. 127 

RODMAN THE KEEPER, [by Con¬ 
stance F. Woolson: Appleton, 1880.] 
“The writer of these sketches, living in 
the South for several years, has acquired 
a just appreciation of the present state of 
society in that region, and in her graceful 
way she tells these stories of southern 
life and manners, exercising her subtle 
humor upon its faults and follies, and 
dwelling with pathos upon its sorrows and 
regrets. A woman’s sympathetic heart 
ever guides the pen of this charming 
writer, who is always natural, but never 
commonplace, and who will win an ad¬ 
mirer in every reader of “Rodman the 
Keeper.” [Penn. Monthly.] Each of the 


sketches has that breath of life in it which 
belongs alone to what is called human 
interest. In each the sympathy is awak¬ 
ened and takes hold upon the life of some 
human being with vital intensity. In each 
a human life passes throu its ordeal, and 
if the endings of the tales are for the most 
part unconventional, they are not the less 
true, not the less artistic, not the less dra¬ 
matic on that account.Miss Woolson’s 

art is superb, and she is lovingly faithful 
to it.” [N. Y. Eve. Post. 128 

ROSE CLARK, [by “Fanny Fern:” 
Mason Brothers , 1856.] “The plot of the 
story is of an unpretending character, free 
from extravagant incidents and artificial 
complications, and deriving its interest 
from the natural pictures of life in the 
experience of the heroine. Left an orphan 
in infancy, and exposed to the usual trials 
of adverse fate, Rose Clark develops a 
sweet feminine nature, and wins both 
sympathy and admiration by her noble 
womanly bearing in the most perplexing 
circumstances. Several striking episodes 
are woven into the principal narrative, 
highly spiced with the pungent satire for 
which the authoress possesses a so remark¬ 
able gift.” [Harper’s. 129 

ROSE IN BLOOM, By L. M. Alcott, 
Boberts, 1876. 

ROSECROFT. [by W: M. F. Round. 
Lee & Shepard , 1881.] “The plot of 
the story is based on such harsh unkind¬ 
ness that we are glad to take refuge in its 
improbability; but the village oddities are 
worth knowing, and Mrs. Stowe herself 
has done nothing better than the old 
negress, unlettered Rachel, and her Bible 
reading.” [Nation. 130 

ROXY" [by E: Eggleston, Scribner , 

1S78.] “-"Were it possible for a man to 

have offered him the choice of his place 
and epoch in the world, it is not to be sup¬ 
posed that any sane person would select 
a town in Southern Indiana at the date 

of the Tippecanoe campaign.Yet such 

things Dr. Eggleston saw in his youth, and 
in such participated. We are no less sure, 
after reading his vigorous, humorous, and 


36 




NOVELS OF AM Eli [CAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


(the theme considered) marvelously pict¬ 
uresque narrative, that he met them .like a 
man, than that he afterward grasped them 
like a philosopher, and has now portrayed 
them like a genuine artist. The book is 
appropriately named after the heroine, 
who is the centre of all its action, and on 
.whom, as on bis worthiest subject, the 
author has shed the strongest light and be" 
stowed the most careful study. The 
remarkable character of Roxy Adams is 
not only clearly conceived, but thoroly and 
admirably developed.” [Atlantic. 131 
RUDDER GRANGE [by F. R: Stock- 
ton, Scribner, 1SS0.] “We would believe 
that we are telling most of our readers 
what they know when we remind them 
that Rudder Grange is the lit name of an 
abandoned canal-boat, which the reporter 
of the story, his wife, servant Pomona, 
and a boarder took possession of and 
transformed into a floating hut; that when 
the canal-boat went under, in a sudden 
storm, the Grangers transferred the title 
to a less unique house, which they hired 
and finally hot, in the country; and that 
about these two houses, the water house 
and the land house, most of the adventures 

of these babes in worldliness gathered. 

Pomona, with her taste for violent read¬ 
ing, her ingenuity in devices, and her ex¬ 
perience as a newly maried bride, is a 
positive contribution to the characters of 
humorous literature. Indeed, the faith¬ 
fulness with which the characters are 
drawn gives the book a position much 
above that of most contemporaneous fun. 
There is conscientious literary work in it 
and an unfailing healtkfulness of play.” 
[Atlantic. 132 

SAM SHIRK [by G: II. Devereux: 
Hurd & Houghton, 1871 ] “is a very 
interesting and vivid picture of adventure 
[in the Maine woods] in hunting, logging, 
lighting with Indians, with enuf of a love 
story interwoven with it to add the neces¬ 
sary human zest. The descriptions of 
scenery are evidently the work of a lover 
of nature, and the characteristic scenes of 
the book, have the unmistakable flavor of 


the woods, and show that the author is 
intimately conversant with the free, whole¬ 
some life of adventure which he describes.” 
[Monthly llelig. Mag. 133 

SANE HOLM’S STORIES [2nd. Series, 
bv II.. (Fiske) Jackson, Scribner, 
1878.] “in this instance, are 5 short love- 
stories, the anonymous writer evidently 
being convinced that no other subject is 
much worth treating. The book might 
bear for motto the old doggerel: 

“Oh! ’tis love, ’tis love, ’tis love 
That makes tbe world go round.” 
Two of these stories are good—“ Farmer 
Bassett’s Romance” and “Joe Hale’s Red 
Stockings”—but tbe others float in an at¬ 
mosphere of unreality. • “ Joe Hale's Bed 
Stockings” might be true, every word of 
it, and has pleasant pictures of sea and 
shore, light-house and hospital, and of 
human beings leading lives therein which 
make it the more remarkable that the same 
author should write such stuff as ‘Mv 
Tourmaline.’ [Nation. 134 

SEALED ORDERS [by E.. S. Phelps 
[Ward], Roberts , 1880.] “Miss Phelps 
excels in stories of kindly and lonely 
women, for the most part single, warped 
into an eccentricity, which is quaint and 
amiable, by a narrow life, withdrawn from 
all the realities and activities of the world, 
save the important exception of charity. 
The best of these stories is of such a 
woman, a poor dressmaker without friends, 
who becomes, throu her goodness to all 
who need a helping hand at the boarding¬ 
house where she lives, the central figure 
and main-stay of them all, albeit quite 
unconsciously. ‘ The True Story of 
Guinever ’ has nothing to do with any¬ 
thing real, but is prettily fanciful. Queen 
Guinever, who is in this case the charming 
little wife of a master carpenter, is saved 
just on the brink of the catastrophe, and, 
with her sorrowful lesson learned, brut 
back to happiness. A somewhat similar 
but less successfully told story,is ‘‘The 
Lady of Shalott.’ The remaining tales 
produce an unpleasant effect of what we 
may paradoxically call the eccentricity of 


37 


NOVELS OK AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


commonplace.” [Nation. 135 

SHADY SIDE, OR LIFE IN A COUN¬ 
TRY PARSONAGE, (The) [by a Pas¬ 
tor’s Wife: Carter , 1862.] “This is a 
new edition of a book too widely known 
to ask for criticism. We are told that, at 
its first appearance, no fewer than 50,000 
copies were required to satisfy the demand. 
If the circulation of the book serves, in 
any degree, to waken our rural community 
to a sense of their frequent injustice 
touching the ministers of religion,—what 
to give them and what to expect from 
them, we hope the last edition may find as 
many readers as the first.” [Church 
Monthly. 13G 

SIMPLY A LOYE STORY. [by P. 
Orne, Cupples , 1885.] “The scenes are 
in a New England fishing-town, and are 
described with all the invigorating interest 
that comes of the peculiar life on its shore 
and on its adjacent waters. The leading 
actor is a sea-captain’s dauter. . . . The 
action is lively and holding, deriving par¬ 
ticular interest from its opposition of 
character and its counterplots. It is well 
managed to lead up to an unexpected 
finale.” [Boston “Globe.” 137 

SIX TO ONE [by E: Bellamy, Put¬ 
nam, 1878.] “is as bright as any one 
could wish. The One is a broken-down 
New York editor who goes to Nantucket 
to recruit; the Six are the maidens unto 
whose mercies he falls, and they begin his 
torture by promising one another not to 
hold any private t6te-&-tetes with him. 
Nevertheless, the end is seen from the 
beginning. Two of them fall in love with 
him, and he falls in love with only one, the 
gentlest and shyest of all, whose pleasures 
and emotions have hitherto been associated 
only with the sea. This life-long, intimate 
inweaving of her moods with the changing 
ocean-view makes the transition to a life 
centred in human relations a difficult ex¬ 
perience, and the conflict is the most 
refined conception in the book, and is 

pleasing until the denouement comes. 

Except for some melodrama and extremely 
bad taste like this, and some remarkable 


sallies of wit, the book has much merit.” 
[Nation. 138 

SNOWBOUND AT EAGLE’S [by 
Bret Harte : Houghton , 1886.] “is of 
as little value as anything he has written. 
Regarded as a story, it is worthless. Re¬ 
garded in detail, for its bits of description, 
keen conversations, witty sayings, it has 
the excellences found in everything from 
the same strong hand. Harte never makes 
a slip in turning a sentence, or a para¬ 
graph, or a brief episode; but when the 
story is nothing, and when in his excellent 
handling of details he still does not make 
any strikingly brilliant or humorous points, 
readers will not care much for the book; 
there is nothing in it but the technique, 
and that interests only the specialist in 
literary criticism. As in everything of 
Harte’s, the external sincerity, the careful 
truth to nature, as far as her sights and 
sounds go, is constantly marred by an 
unreality, a theatrical insincerity, even a 
defect of observation, in dealing with hu¬ 
man nature.” [Overland.] “The char¬ 
acters are well drawn : el: llale, the trans¬ 
planted gentleman of culture; his weak 
and slightly faded wife; his shallow- 
minded but positive mother-in-law; Col¬ 
onel Clinch, who strives to hit the happy 
mean between law and lawlessness; Zeenie, 
the coarse backwoods beauty; and even 
Falkner, the mysterious and moustached 
villain pro tempore. George Lee, and 
Kate, the heroine, so far as the story has a 
heroine, are more feebly drawn; the 
former is the familiar noble-hearted rascal 
and rake, who never ‘went back’ on a 
friend or insulted a respectable woman. 
The blemish in the story is the unpleasant 
flirtation of Lee and Mrs. Hale, and the 
gratuitous soup^on of a similiar fault on 
the part of Hale towards Zeenie. The 
conclusion is mildly dramatic; we seem to 
be transported to the theatre, and hear the 
ladies adjusting their wraps and the gentle¬ 
men hunting for their hats, in the uneasy 
5 minutes before the curtain falls.” [Crit¬ 
ic. 139 

SOMEBODY’S NEIGHBORS. [by 


38 



NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


Rose (Terry) Cooke: Osgood , 1881 .] 

“-Connecticut is seen once or twice in 

the stories which follow,'which all relate 
to quaint New England life of the “Sam 
Lawson” order, with much dialect, local 
slang, and other familiar coloring, One of 
the best is u Cal Culver and the Devil.” 
Cal was the village do-nothing, with his 
mind “nigh about made up” on an all im¬ 
portant question:. . . .The titles of Mrs. 
Cooke’s stories are as suggestive as any¬ 
thing further we can say of them—such 
as “ Dely's Cow,” “Miss Beulah’s Bon¬ 
net,” “Polly Mariner , Tailoress,” 

“ Squire Paine’s Conversion,” and “Mrs. 
Flint's Maried Experience.” [boston 
“Literary World.” 140 

SOUTH COUNTY NEIGHBORS [by 
Esther B. Carpenter, Boberts, 188S.] 
“By “South County” is meant the Narra- 
gansett region in Rhode-Island. which 
has more people of peculiar character than 
one would be likely to find anywhere else 
in New England, unless it might be in 
some out-of-the-way corner where an 
aboriginal element still lingers. A collec¬ 
tion of country folk with more individu¬ 
ality, more oddities, is seldom found 
between the covers of a book. The 
sketches are bright, racy, with plenty of 
mother wit, and each character as original 
as if he or she were the only specimen of 
the kind, yet all are vital with the human¬ 
ity which makes the whole race kin. 
“Bucolic and seafaring types” the author 
designates them, and asserts that they are 
“simply types, rather than likenesses” but 
the reader will feel sure that they are 
excellent dashes, at least, at portraiture.” 
[Boston “Literary World.” 141 

SPHINX’S CHILDREN, (The) [by 
Rose (Terry) Cooke, Ticknor, 1886.] 
“Every page of Mrs. Cooke’s work shows 
thotful painstaking. ‘The Sphinx’s Chil¬ 
dren’ is but the name of a rather fantastic 
[and almost unreadable] sketch which is 
prefixed to a collection of the stories. One 
One of them, “The Deacon’s Week,” with 
the sweet sobriety of its working-day piety, 
has long ago made its way round the 


world. The stories all contribute to the 
impression of careful observation with 
much loving sympathy, and of a constant 
aim after the simplest and most effective 
expression. So many of them are in a 
minor key that the sadness becomes a 
burden. In some shape or other, the ever- 
recurring subject is the forbidding aspect 
of New England [Connecticut] life, one 
or two generations ago, and the revolt of 
the younger or more ardent spirits against 
it. The total effect is to make it duller, 
colder, harder, than it really was. One 
drive along the old Connecticut turnpikes 
will show proof enuf of the existence of 
a large and generous life, side by side with 
such homes as 31 rs. Cooke has preferred 
for her chief study. Her picture to be 
complete should more fully include both. 
At least, the apple blossoms come once a 
year in New England.” [Nation. 142 
STEADFAST; [by Rose (Terry) 
Cooke: Ticknor, 1889.] “Whatever 
Mrs. Cooke writes is eagerly accepted by 
her public, which is large and intelligent. 
Her stories of New England life are the 
best in the language, none excepted. 
“Steadfast,” her first novel, is the suc¬ 
cessor of “Somebody’s Neighbors.” The 
scene is laid in a hill township in Con¬ 
necticut .The studies of New England 

character and manners of 150 years ago 
are able and conscientious.Indisputa¬ 

bly the finest part of the book is the episode 
—it is hardly more—of Rachel Mather’s 
love and sufferings. Her manage, her 
long martyrdom and her beautiful mission 
to husband and parish are depicted with 
equal strength and delicacy. Esther, pas¬ 
sion-driven, undisciplined, and tossed be¬ 
tween alternate shillings and repentings, 
is an artistic contrast. What may be 
called the second-class characters are, as 
usual, in Mrs. Cooke’s hands, inimitable. 
She has done nothing better than Deacon 
Ammi and Miss Tempy.” [ Home¬ 
maker. 143 

STILLWATER TRAGEDY, (The) 
[by T: B. Aldrich: Houghton, 1880.] 
“The motive of the story is a murder. The 



NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


first thing to be said about the author’s 
treatment of it is that it is not sensational. 
The author has realized exactly how such 
a tragedy would affect a New England 
village. And yet there is nothing in the 
story in the nature of a police report. The 
affair is idealized enuf to remove it from 
that. . .Mr. Aldrich knows the New Eng¬ 
land girl. With a real and yet poetic hand 
Margaret appears on the scene, with the 
mingled sweetness and strength of her 
class. The love scenes between Richard 
and Margaret are tender and engaging. 
. . .In his treatment of the labor problem, 
is shown an insight and strength, in 
regard to practical questions, which might 
not have been demanded of a poet and a 
romancer. We do not know anywhere a 
more admirable description than he gives 
us of a “strike.” All its illogical passion 
and futility are sketched to the life. Nor 
will the reader find elsewhere a better por¬ 
trait of a manufacturing village, with all 
the grime of it revealed and nothing over¬ 
drawn. Such pictures are apt to give the 
reader a horror, and convince him that 
living in them would be impossible for a 
cleanly disposed person. But the author 
gives the compensating aspects of the 
place, and we see that residence in Still¬ 
water would not be a martyrdom. The 
whole book, in short, is sane and sensible. 
[Hartford (Conn.) Courant. 144 

STORY OF A BAD BOY, (Tiie) [by 
T: B. Aldrich, Fields, 18(59.] “ — 

Much of Master Tom’s “badness” was 
comparative, and, perhaps, thrown into 
unfair relief by the puritanic austerity of 
the quaint New England town [Ports¬ 
mouth, N. H.] where he lived, whose 
inhabitants, “were many of them pure 
Christians every day of the seven, except 
the seventh.” But Master Tom has his 
faults, besides his disposition to evade the 
Sunday School. He assisted in adding an 
old stage-coach to a Fourth-of-July bon¬ 
fire; he joined a secret society of young 
losels, yclept “The Centipedes,” the walk 
of whose various feet was ungodly; he 
aided and abetted in the setting off of an 


ancient and decayed battery, to the mid¬ 
night alarm of the people of Rivermouth; 
he changed the signs in the Rivermoutli 
streets; he ran away to go to sea. All of 
which is picturesquely, and, we fear, fas¬ 
cinatingly set forth, with some account of 
his loves for a wonderful pony, who 
returned his affection, and- a grown-up 
lady, who didn’t. The characters are well 
drawn, tho not so well as to divide the 
interest with the hero, who is, in fact, 
himself a subordinate figure to the inci¬ 
dents. There is good taste, as well as good 
sense, in the treatment of the “fight with 
Conway,” and the ingenious elision of 
merely coarse details. The love-scene, 
where Tom’s grown up Dulcinea charac¬ 
teristically evades his passion, and settles 
his status by “rumbling his hair all over 
his forehead,” is natural and half pathetic. 
Taken altogether, Mr. Aldrich’s little 
friend stands a much better chance of liv¬ 
ing in literature than many grown-up 
heroes.” [Overland. 145 

STORY OF A COUNTRY TOWN. 
(The) [by E. W. Howe : Osgood , 1884.] 
“The author has described a community 
which feeds its higher life with a faith no 
longer held as an aspiration, but as a 
warning; the people, meanwhile, have 
been dislocated from the conditions which 
brut them into healthy association with 
the world. They are engaged in a sordid 
struggle for existence; they have lost their 
ideals, and the world seems to mock at 
them. A more dreary waste than the 
country town which Mr. Howe describes 
could not well be imagined. It appears to 
have no traditions, even, of beauty, and 
certainly no anticipations of hope. It is 
degraded spiritually and mentally, and 
nature itself seems to take on the prevail¬ 
ing gray hue, and to shut in upon the 
narrowing circle of life. The circum¬ 
stances of this life are recorded with a 
pitiless fidelity. • -It is a Western [Kan¬ 
sas] town,—that is all we know. He uses 
a merciless frankness of speech, and there 
is a remarkable candor in his manner; it is 
only when the reader lias separated him- 


40 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


self from the fascination of the style that 
he perceives how completely the whole 
book is spun from the brain of the writer. 
....Nature is as cheerless as human life, 
and the book is a nightmare without the 
customary self-conviction of the night¬ 
mare.” [Atlantic. 146 

SUMMER IDYL (A) [by “Christian 
Reid,” Appleton , 1878.] “is a tranquil 
apd well-told story of summer leisure and 
pleasant family life in the beautiful scenery 
of the mountains of North Carolina. In 
it one may find various and quiet pleas¬ 
ure.” [Nation. 147 

SUMMER IN A CANON. (A) [by Kate 
I). WlGGlN, Houghton, 188',).] “Pleas¬ 
anter far is Mrs. Wiggin's “A Summer in 
a Canon.” And this not only to Western 
readers familiar with the sort of life 
pictured, but probably even more to those 
to whom the outdoor summer, with no 
postponements on account of the weather, 
is first made real in these pages. It is a 
simple story of the life of a party of bright 
young people, guided by one or two wise 
older ones, in a camping trip in Southern 
California. Their fun and their mishaps 
and their amusements and adventures, and 
most of all their merry talks and spicy 
letters, are made very interesting. There 
is no sentimentality in the book, and the 
one girl who tries to introduce a little 
coquetry is vigorously disapproved by 
these healthy young folk. This breezy, 
outdoors life, with its moral and physical 
healthfulness, its sparkling wit and kindly 
fun, will cause the book to be loved by 
young people, and by all older people, too, 
whose hearts are still young.” [Over¬ 
land. 148 

SUMMER IN LESLIE GOLDTII- 
WAITE’S LIFE. (A) [by A. D. (T.) 
Whitney: Ticknor, 1867.] “The story 
of the “Summer” is told in a charming 
style, and abounds in happy hits and 
suggestive- thbts at home and in the 
mountains, and has many a capital 
lesson.” [Radical.] “Simple, natural, 
and homely, thotful, earnest, and ‘human,’ 
we find on these pages one of the best 


stories for young people,—and for old, too, 

which was ever written.Thus passing 

her holiday time among the mountains, 
rattling over the stony roads or playing 
croquet upon the lawn, climbing rocky 
hillsides, or darning stockings and making 
children’s dresses. And when she went 
to her home it was with a fuller heart and 
a riper soul than that with which she had 
left it, and you who go with her to the 
story’s end will feel yourself a debtor to 
this young life. Leslie Goldthwaite is 
the figment of a novelist’s brain perhaps, 
but the humanity in her appeals to that in 
your heart and ours, which recognizes it 
as akin to itself.” [Friend. 140 

SUMMER IN OLDPORT HARBOR, 
(A) [by W. II. Metcalf: Lippincott, 
1887.] “A breezy novel, full of the flavor 
of out-door life, just the book to take up 
at the sea-shore for an idle hour on the 
veranda. It concerns principally the expe¬ 
riences of a young doctor and his artist 
chum, who come to Cup Island, near the 
Connecticut shore, to pass their vacation, 
and who are joined by the sister of one of 
the young men and her nearest friend, who 
bring with them Bid, a maid-of-al 1-work, 
to superintend the cooking arrangements 
of a very primitive cottage. The descrip¬ 
tions of natural scenery are clever and 
realistic, the character-drawing is gener¬ 
ally very good, and Mr. Sandy, the village 
postmaster and shop-keeper of Old port, is 
sketched with a good deal of humor.” 
[Boston “Gazette.” 150 

SUZETTE [by M.. S. (N.) Tiernan: 
Holt, 1880.] “is not exactly a picture of 
Richmond [Va.] in the forties, being rather 
a chronicle of pleasant family life. The old 
city, with its generous homes and its tra¬ 
ditions, fills in the edges and the corners of 
the canvas much after the fashion in which 
the garden is introduced, or the hills, in 
the pictures which artists describe as 
figures with landscape. Miss Tiernan 
follows very closely the method of group¬ 
ing by contrasts—the lonely little heroine, 
almost a waif, in the chill grandeur of the 
great house, and the beloved dauter and 



NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


sister in the bustling life of n home which 
affection makes glad in spite of slender 
means; two men, the one growing into a 
lonely recluse, the other frank-hearted, 
giving and winning confidence. The types 
are none of them new, but they are saved 
from being conventional by the freshness 
of the author’s fancy and the ingenuity and 
originality of the incidents. The surround¬ 
ings, too, are novel, for all Southern cit¬ 
ies are still very remote from us, and life 
in them as it was forty years ago is utterly 
different from the hurried rush of city life 
today. A small circle, living on, genera : 
tion after generation, without change, 
develops a community of interest known 
nowhere else. The life was certainly nar¬ 
row, yet its sympathies were thereby the 
deeper. It is easy to call it indifferent, 
idle, or by a harsher term, but in it all 
there was a charm of placid leisure such 
as survives in the pages of ‘Sir Charles 
Grandison.’ ” [Nation. 151 

SWALLOW-BARN [by J: I*. Ken¬ 
nedy: Putnam , 1851.] “Its quiet yet 
forcible pictures are of that class which 
live in the memory, because they are true 
sketches of homely, every-day life. It 
really does one’s heart good to follow the 
author in his limnings of country-life in 
the ‘Old Dominion’ some 30 years ago; 
the portraits of the characters who made 
up her quiet and happy neighborhoods; 
‘the mellow, bland, and sunny luxuriance 
of her old-time society;’ the good fellow¬ 
ship of ‘Old Virginia;’ its hearty and 
constitutional companionableness, the 
thriftless gayety of the people, their dog¬ 
ged but amiable invincibility of opinion, 
and that overflowing hospitality which 
‘knew no retiring ebb’.” [ Knicker¬ 
bocker. 152 

TALES OF NEW-ENGLAND [by S.. 
O. Jewett: Houghton, 1890.] “Eightof 
Miss Jewett’s stories, selected from her 
previous volumes, make a group of quiet 
pictures of quaint, homely people living 
everyday lives in uneventful places. The 
most delicate art gives interest to appar¬ 
ently barren material. Without an effort 


at creating an effect, the author presents 
real life with reverential truthfulness, and 
shows how even the most unprepossessing 
people have their “history,” worthy of 
contemplation. Many of the characters 
are New England “old maids,” but most 
of these cherish the memory of some 
romance. The men are plain speaking folk, 
and are not without their own important 
life services. For a piece of exquisite lit¬ 
erary art, there has been nothing published 
lately in short stories more perfect than 
“Miss Tempy's Watchers .” Other stories 
have their own charm.” [Boston (Mass.) 
“Journal.” 153 

TALLAHASSEE GIRL (A) [by 
Maurice Thompson: Osgood, 1882.] 
“abounds in crudities of thot and absurd¬ 
ities of expression at which it is impossible 
not to smile; yet, it is quite the. best of the 
“Round-Robin Series.” Its sketches are 
broken, but one catches from them the 
charm of the faded dignity, the drowsy 
afternoon calm of the old Southern capi¬ 
tal. Lucie, the heroine, is a gracious fig¬ 
ure, and it is in her portrait and in the 
conception of the relations of the three 
men of the story to her and to each other, 
that the marked merit of the book lies. 
The delicacy and reserve of handling with 
which the main idea is developed, even in 
the extravagance of style, suggest a musi¬ 
cian who can compose a sweet and tender 
harmony and yet knows not quite how to 
manage the pedals. The surmise is ob¬ 
vious that the book is a first effort. If so, 
it is either a chance hit of unusual felicity, 
or else it is the evident promise of some¬ 
thing better.” [Nation. 154 

TENTING AT STONY BEACH [by 
M.. L. Pool: Ho ughton, 188S.] “Humor 
here occasionally degenerates into smart¬ 
ness ; nevertheless it is for the most part 
genuine humor, and it includes a lively 
sense of character both among the South 
Shore [Cape Cod] natives and the sum¬ 
mer folk. The pretty girl of our civiliza¬ 
tion, who pushes into the canvas homes of 
the tenters, is caut with much of Mr. 
James’s neatness, while Yates, the “shif’- 


42 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


less toot,” and his beautiful energetic wife, 
and Randy Rankin and her husband, are 
verities beyond his range. It is a pity 
that Miss Pool does not hold her hand 
altogether from caricature and melodrama, 
hut it must he owned she does not.” 
[Howells. 155 

THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY [by 
W: D. IIowells: Osgood, 1872.] “ — 
Basil and Isabel March, after a broken 
engagement, have maried, and, some weeks 
afterward, start upon their wedding jour¬ 
ney, having a horror of being looked upon 

as a bridal pair.Their journey is up 

the Hudson, across New York to Niagara, 
then to Canada, and thence home. Any 
extracts we might make would give little 
sense of the exquisite llavor of the whole, 
and our readers will find content only in 
reading the volume. It is a pleasant hook 
when you are tired, and when you are not; 
and, while it will entertain your hour of 
leisure, it will assert its worth even in your 
busier moments.” [Overland. 156 

THEOPHILUS AND OTHERS [by M.. 
(31.) Dodge: Scribner, 1876.] “is not 
fairly a novel: it is a collection of short 
sketches. It is full of humor, and altho 
there are at times signs of watering the 
jokes, there is hardly one of the sketches 
which is not entertaining. The first and 
longest one, ‘Dobb’s Horse,’ is a fair 
samplq of 3Irs. Dodge’s humor in its 
derision of the seeker after pleasure in the 
country. But perhaps the best is ‘3Iiss 
3Ialony on the Chinese Question.’ ‘Our 
Debating Society Skeleton’ also shows how 
a good story can be well told. The book 
is not one of great importance, and the 
humor is of an irresponsible kind which 
does not strike very deep, but it is always 
innocent and agreeable.” [Nation. 157 
THOUSAND A YEAR (A) [by 3Irs. 
E. 31. Bruce : Lee & Shepard , 1866.] “is 
a romance full of reality. It describes the 
trials of a clergyman and his family, living, 
or rather starving, on inadequate salaries: 
tho it belongs to the “Shady-Side” litera¬ 
ture, it is written in a genial mood, and 
abounds in wit and humor. If you would 


know something of the unrequited toil of 
a class of men (and of their overworked and 
patient wives) to whom American civiliza¬ 
tion owes a debt which can never be paid, 
get the book and read it, and do something 
to lift their heavy burdens.” [3Ionthly 
Rel. 3Iag. 158 

THREE GENERATIONS, [by Sarah 
A. Emery : Lee tfi Shepard, 1872.] “It 
is a view of country life in Massachus¬ 
etts in the closing years of the last, and 
first of the present, centuries—a series of 
sketches, it may be called, connected by a 
story. In point of literary merit it is far 
inferior to 31rs. Stowe’s work; but in min¬ 
uteness and fidelity of description, and a 
certain realism which it is not easy to 

analyze, it must rank higher.Its 

scene is laid, for the most part, in and near 
Newburyport, and many of its incidents 
seem to be facts, or founded on facts. For 
those who live, or have lived, in that 
ancient city, the book will possess an in¬ 
terest that we should in vain try to define; 
and all who have reverence for the past, 
and care to know what life was in the 
early days of the nation—every day life, 
in one of the most notable communities of 
New England—will find it an entertaining, 
and, we believe, accurate report.” [Boston 
“Literary World.” 159 

T03IPKINS AND OTHER FOLKS [by 
P. Deming, Houghton, 1885.] “Readers 
of the magazines have already met ‘ Tomp¬ 
kins and Other Folks.’ However, the 
stories lose nothing by being grouped, and 
any one who enjoys encountering an old 
acquaintance in good company will take 
up the volume with pleasure. The chief 
charm of the stories is their quietness; 
after that, perhaps, in their suggestiveness, 
tho they owe not a little to their tone of 
kindly humor and mildness. 3!r. Deming 
avoids the disagreeable things in life; his 
stories show a disposition to be lively— 
not from animal spirits, hut from that 
genial attitude of mind induced by looking 
on the bright side. That Tompkins should 
lose his illusions, and turu from the enthu¬ 
siastic hopes of his college days to auc* 


43 




NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


tioneering in Chicago, might be made to 
seem a genuine tragedy. Yet most young 
men are enthusiastic, their hopes have 
some such ending as Tompkins’; and Mr. 
Deming prefers to dwell, in his pleasant, 
half-pathetic way, on the auctioneer’s 
unromantic love affair and his warm¬ 
hearted remembrances of early days. One 
or two of the stories are hardly more than 
sketches. “The Court in Schoharie” is 
nothing but the description of court week 
in a slumberous, old-fashioned village 
among the Catskills; but it is done with 
such a touch of sympathy—the influence 
of the simple peop>le and their humble, 
picturesque surroundings on the old 
Judge’s remaining bit of sentiment is so 
delicately suggested—that the piece is bet¬ 
ter than a story would have been. This 
sketch and “Mr. Toby's Wedding Jour¬ 
ney '” make the best of the book: but throu- 
out there is an evenness both in matter and 
in style that makes a choice almost entirely 
a matter of taste.” [Nation. 100 

TWO COLLEGE GIRLS [by H.. D. 
Brown : Ticknor , 18S8.] “is an attempt 
at a “Tom Brown” for a girls’ college,— 
presumably Yassar. Without succeeding 
to the fullest extent, the book is an inter¬ 
esting and amusing story of the life of the 
girl undergraduate. The characteristics 
of the New England girl are brot into 
sharp contrast with the Chicago girl, her 
room-mate; yet the differences are shown to 
be more of early association and education 
than inherent in the real characters of the 
girls. The demure maiden whose home is 
“seventy miles from Boston” never had 
the chance to develop a frivolous liking 
for frizzes and ribbons, and the Chicago 
girl is not without her serious aspirations, 
in spite oi her giggling and fondness for 
pickles. The influence of these two on 
each other, mutual repulsion, gradually 
disappearing on closer knowledge, is well 
shown. Of course, the quiet girl captures 
the brother of her room-mate, and at the 
end is borne off to married felicity in 
Chicago.” [Overland]. “The heroine— 
a singularly unattractive and provincial 

41 


young woman, of that narrow experience 
and rigid integrity of nature typical of the 
better class of New England farmers— 
made her first exit from her village to take 
her examinations for what was really her 
entrance, not only to college, but to a broad 
and healthful life. There she met the 
hundred different types of people which 
make up the great world. Intellectual 
girls, rich and fashionable girls, girls of all 
kinds, some of them immeasurably her in¬ 
feriors in acquirements, and yet possessed 
of that nameless attraction which made 
them beloved by everybody, and which 
she herself so conspicuously lacked. To 
her chagrin, she discovered that good 
scholarship was not the one standard of 
judgment, and that to be loved and honor¬ 
ed it was not enuf to have entered as a 
sophomore. For some months she nursed 
the natural pride which in her little New 
England village had seemed to her a pledge 
of her superiority, until her isolation be¬ 
came unbearable. Then she came to recog¬ 
nize the truth that without the grains of 
sweetness and humanity, learning will 
make neither a wise nor a happy woman. 
Her college-life was thus truly an educa¬ 
tion.” [Critic. 161 

TWO COMPTON BOYS [by A: IIorriN: 
Houghton , 1884.] “The audience, of 
young and old, whom Mr. Hoppin capti¬ 
vated with his ‘Auton House’—may their 
number never grow less—will experience 
no disappointment on reading ‘Two Comp¬ 
ton Boys.’ W r e have again a graphic 
picture of Providence (and, to a consider, 
able extent, of New England) life in the 
youth of men now just past the middle age- 
and one which the historian may accept as 
trustfully as any chronicle he is likely to 
depend upon. But whereas in ‘Auton 
House’ we were made acquainted with 
the ‘vie intime’ of a single family, in ‘Two 
Compton Boys’ the scenes are mostly away 
from home, (not the same home if one may 
guess), at school and afield, and there is 
something like the evolution of a plot with 
half a tragedy. The humor remains, the 
comical illustrations are renewed, and an 



€ 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 




hour of profitable relaxation can be 
promised any one who follows the fortunes 
of Dick Reydon and his sable “alter ego’ 
Peez Fittz.” [Nation. 162 

TWO RUNAWAYS, [by H. S. Ed¬ 
wards* Century Co ., 1889.] “Mr. 
Edwards has a rare and charming talent: 
he reproduces the negro in his multifarious 
‘funniness’ and tenderness and dramatic 
tendencies with a completeness, a sympa¬ 
thy, never before compassed by a South¬ 
ern writer: his pathos brings instant tears; 
his humor is as spontaneous as it is human; 
and beneath both lies the most intricate 
knowledge of negro character—grown 
from life-long association,—loving appre¬ 
ciation, and a power of throwing himself 
into the ‘mClOe’ of the rather mixed negro 
nature which we have not before seen in a 
writer of his ‘section.’ It is not the negro 
alone, however, with whom he deals: he 
is equally felicitous in his delineations of 
‘cracker’ experience. ‘Elder Brown’s 
Backslide’ is a capital tidbit of this kind, 
and *xi Born Inventor’ is the most amusing 
skit imaginable. There are three Negro 
tales in this collection that show real 
genius: “Two Runaways,’ ‘Ole, Miss and 
Sweetheart,’ and ‘De valley an’ de Shud¬ 
der.’ The middle story is as exquisite as 
anything in Daudet: while all show an 
uncommon dramatic power, which crops 
out, too (decked with wreathing smiles and 
fast following tears), in ‘An Idyll of 
Sinkin’Mount’in.’ This is a thin volume, 
but it is thick with suggestiveness and 
promise.” [Critic. 163 

UNCLE JACK’S EXECUTORS, [by 
Annette L. Noble, Putnam, 1880.] 
“Uncle Jack was a country doctor, dead 
before the book begins, and his executors 
are 3 young women living together on the 
old place with their aunt. A more cheer¬ 
ful, optimistic collection of women it would 
be hard to find. One is an artist, with 
proclivities for surgery and medicine; 
another is a writer; and the third the 
general utility member. They have little 
money besides what the two professional 
sisters earn, but their life is a free and 


unconstrained one. The aunt is a cleverly 
sketched, inconsecutive old lady, with a 
little echo in her of Mrs. Nickleby, but 
more refined and less of a caricature. 
Three men are introduced, one of whom, 
Jerry Scudder, a well-to-do farmer, wishes 
to marry the housekeeperly Dorothy, but 
is easily persuaded by her to keep his 
affections till she finds a wife for him, 
which she does in Molly Howells. A 
second is a young clergyman of sense and 

spirit, and the third an editor-We can 

promise our readers a very agreeable hour 
over the book. It is not. Heaven be 
praised, in the highest style of art, but it 
is full of good nature and kindliness; some 
of the scenes are sketched with real humor, 
and if the book seems amateurish, it has at 
any rate a refinement and quality of fresh¬ 
ness which we wish were more common in 
professional work.” [Atlantic. 164 

UPON A CAST [by C.. Dunning 
[Wood] : Harper, 11*85.] “is a very 
amusing little story, and turns on the ex¬ 
periences of a couple of ladies who, with a 
longing for a quiet life, “The world forget¬ 
ting, by the world forgot,” settle in “New- 
broek” [Poughkeepsie.] Little count¬ 
ing upon this niche outside the world 
becoming a centre of interest or a theatre 
of events, the necessity of presenting their 
credentials to the social magnates of the 
place does not occur to these ladies,—one 
the widow of a Prussian officer, and the 
other her niece. They prefer to remain, 
as it were, incognito; and, pried into as the 
seclusion of the new-comers is by all the 
curious, this reticence soon causes miscon¬ 
structions and scandals. The petty gossip, 
the solemnities of self-importance, and the 
Phariseeism of a country neighborhood 
arc very well portrayed, and, we fear, 
without any especial exaggeration.’ The 
story is told with unflagging spirit, and 
shows quick perceptions and a lively feel¬ 
ing for situations.” [Lippincott’s.] “A 
novel quite fit and proper for summer read¬ 
ing ; it is light and pleasant and extremely 
entertaining. The action, which embraces 
but the brief space of a summer, is rapid, 


45 


NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


and, if never absorbing, is still never en¬ 
tirely devoid of interest.” [Nation. 165 
VACATION IN A BUGGY. (A) [by 
Maria L.. Bool, Putnam, 1887.] “A 
very sparkling, entertaining narrative of 
the adventures of two ladies who started 
with a buggy and a horse ‘warranted 
sound and kind in all harness,’ for a trip 
throu Berkshire [Massachusetts.] The 
The weather was intensely hot when they 
started, they had a variety of amusing 
adventures, and the description of scenes 
and towns is very life-like. It is witty 
and humorous, but very natural as well. 
The two women were very courageous and 
had a good time, as they surely deserved 
it.” [Hartford “Religious Herald.” 16G 
VASSALL MORTON [by Francis 
Parkman: Phillips, Sampson, & Co., 
1856.] “is honorably distinguished from 
most American novels by its hearty man¬ 
hood, its simple and honest strength. It 
never lags, is nowhere tedious, but presses 
to its purpose without halt or bend or any 
book-making inflations.The main ac¬ 

tion of the piece is carried on in places 
most familiar to us. New York and Bos¬ 
ton and dear otd Cambridge [Mass.] inter¬ 
change on its broad stage with the Alps, 
and the Lake of Como. We hear the pecu¬ 
liar talk of our streets and country folk, 
together with slight sounds of the lan¬ 
guages across the sea, but none of them to 
excess. There is but a touch and a hint, 
and enuf is suggested. The volume, tho 
soon read, comprises great variety, and 
ministers to many kinds of emotion. It 
has strokes of genial humor and of deepest 
passion, tones of the most ordinary life and 

the tramp of romantic adventure.We 

commend the book to the public for a 
wholesome book, as well as a most engag¬ 
ing one.” [Christ. Examiner. 167 

VILLAGE PHOTOGRAPHS, (by 
Augusta Larned, Holt, 1887.] “This 
volume illustrates the fact that a village 
offers as good opportunities for the obser¬ 
vation of human nature, within limits, as 
does the city, with the added advantage of 
a country sincerity and hardiness of cha¬ 


racter. This particular village is of the 
New England type. Its inhabitants 
have a familiar look as they come before 
us in turn. There are the judge, the jack- 
of-all-trades, the young man of genius 
without an occupation, the recluse with a 
dark romance, the ne’er-do-well, and the 
good doctor, who belongs to the group in 
which Holmes delights, and who is drawn 
with a skill not inferior to his own. There 
are women of all varieties of weakness and 
strength of mind, schoolmistresses, old 
maids, flirts, widows, in an abundance 
that accurately indicates, one thinks, the 
surplus of the sex. It is a long story 
which the author tells. She has exhausted 
the field, not in the sense of telling all that 
is to be known, but in leaving out no detail 
that belongs to the general impression. A 
good many life-histories are related, not 
as the novelist writes them, but in the way 
in which they are really known to the 
people of the town. One lives in the 
place, as he reads, and finds out that there 
is no secrecy possible for any of its inhabi¬ 
tants. Sooner or later even the passing 
stranger learns their affairs from start to 
finish. The description of these human 
matters makes the bulk of the book, tho 
the course of the seasons and the natural 
features of the w r oods and mountains and 
“the pine barrens” are utilized to keep a 
country atmosphere always present. The 
rustics are true rustics, true Yankees; and 
whoever likes the “simple annals of the 
poor” will find this volume full of reality, 
and sometimes touched with homely 
pathos.” [Nation. 168 

WALTER THORNLEY [by Susan II. 
Sedgwick, 1859.] “Altho wearing the 
garb of a fictitious work, this charming 
domestic story is too rich in natural inci¬ 
dents and familiar characters not to have 
been founded in personal experience. Its 
scenes have a singular air of reality, while 
brightened with a true glow of imagination 
and romance. In just and expressive 
delineations of character, and in a high 
tone of moral sympathy, the present 
volume fully sustains the reputation of the 




NOVELS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


writer.” [Harper’s. 161) 

WAY DOWN* EAST [by Sera Smith, 
Derby , 1855.] “The author’s brain is 
overflowing with Yankee traditions, local 
anecdotes, and personal recollections, 
which he reproduces with a freshness and 
point which always protect the reader 
from satiety. The force of his descriptions 
consists in their perfect naturalness. 
They are never overcharged—never dis¬ 
torted, for the sake of grotesque effect, 
never spiced too highly for the healthy 
palate—but read almost like literal tran¬ 
scripts of New England country life, 
before the age of railroads and telegraphs 
had brushed away its piquant individual¬ 
ity.” [Harper’s. 170 

W HAT-TO-DO-CLUB (The) [ Ilob- 
erts , 1885.] “is a work of collaboration 
by II.. Campbell and Mrs. Poole, the 
former telling a pleasant, if not very orig¬ 
inal, story of New England life, the lat¬ 
ter writing the letters in which the doings 
of the “Busy-Bodies,” a New Jersey club, 
are related for the instruction of the 
“What-to-Do’s.” Both clubs are in search 
of employment which shall be at once 
interesting and profitable. The assurance 
of the writers that each experiment is an 
actual one, truthfully described, makes 
the book a valuable storehouse of informa¬ 
tion. The tone of it is admirable, sweet, 
and healthful, making gentle household 
things and home affections of the first im¬ 
portance, and then trying to show what 
occupations are not incompatible with 
them, either in fact or in spirit.” [ Na¬ 
tion. 171 

WHITE HERON. (A) [by S.. O. 
Jewett: Houghton , 1886.] “Of Miss 
Jewett’s stories little can ever be said, ex¬ 
cept to remark afresh on their beauty, 
their straitforward simplicity, and above 
all, their loving truth to the life of rural 
New England not merely in its external 
aspects, but in its very heart and spirit. 
... .In view of the current misconceptions 
of the Puritan temper which threaten to 
fasten themselves upon history, such 
authentic records of its rugged kindliness, 


its. intensity of personal affections, its 
capacity for liberality, are invaluable. 
Nor can one doubt that these ‘bona-fide’ 
Yankees, yet lingering among the remote 
farms, are the true descendants in char¬ 
acter as well as blood of the original colo¬ 
nists, if he will compare them with ‘G: 
Eliot’s’ studies of the farmer folk from 
among whom they came. The community 
of essential character, modified by 200 
years of greater independence, more liberal 
thot, and harder effort, is unmistakable. 
<‘A White Heron” contains 2 or 3 stories 
which are among the author’s best, thothe 
average of the collection is scarcely equal 
to previous ones. The first story, “A 
Wlfite Heron,” however, is perfect in its 
way—a tiny classic.” [Overland. 172 
WIND OF DESTINY (T*e) [by A. 
S. Hardy, Houghton , 1886.] “is far 
from being a bad novel. One cannot, of 
course, expect every story which “turns 
out the wrong way” to be a genuinely 
powerful tragedy; but, for the absence of 
intense dramatic interest, one expects com¬ 
pensation in the way of pathos or sur¬ 
prise, and this Mr. Hardy has managed to 
give. In spite of a shadowy uncertainty 
which vails the chief characters, there is a 
genuineness about honest Jack Temple 
which, just in time, saves the story from 
seeming unreal. His is indeed the pathetic 
figure of the tale, tho the lonely Sehonberg, 
with his sad memories, seems to have been 
meant for the part. And it is to Jack also 
that one’s sympathies go out, rather than 
to Rowan Ferguson, the painter, when the 
happiness of both is destroyed by the weak 
woman who had loved Rowan and mar¬ 
ried Jack. There is a quiet nobleness 
sometimes in the aspect of an every-day 
man of business who is capable of deep 
feeling, and of showing it without osten¬ 
tation, which is dear to the American 
heart; and tho Mr. Hardy depends largely 
upon his fatalism to replace natural mo¬ 
tives, the misery of Jack Temple is plainly 
apparent and very touching.” [Nation. 173 
WOMAN’S INHERITANCE (A) [by 
Amanda M. Douglas : Lee & Shepard, 


47 


NOVKLS OF AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


1886.] “is one of the books which the 
critic’s feeling would lead him to speak of 
more impatient ly than his judgment would 
sanction; for the book is well-meant, it is 
not without a respectable degree of pure 
story interest, is free from coarseness, and 
has a sensible moral. In fact, its defect is 
is the same as that of the typical Sunday- 
school book (save for the sentimentalizing 
of religion, of which it is not guilty)—that 
is, a pervasive atmosphere of the second 
rate in intellect and taste. It is hard to 
say how this comes in. The author makes 
a very great point of good society, and 
does not palpably break with the facts in 
describing it; perhaps it is more by what 
she fails to put in, that she succeeds in 
being hopelessly second-rate. Her hero¬ 
ines are admirable compounds of loveliness 
and excellence, her heroes, Bayards; and 
they carry out their parts with reasonable 
correctness; but while they move on 
briskly throu the action of the piece (for 
Miss Douglas has a very fair idea of the 
construction and motion of a narrative), 
they never live —they are merely embodied 
ideas.” [Overland. 174 

YEAR IN EDEN (A) [by Harriet 
W. Freston, Roberts , 1887.] “is saved 
by the presence of 2 or 3 genuine and natu¬ 
ral characters. They are not those to 
whom most care is given, and who, in the 
action, are most important. One is Pro¬ 
fessor Griswold, clever, pushing, plausi¬ 
ble, and untrustworthy; the others are 
two old maids, the fine drawing of whose 
insignificance contrasts curiously with the 
woodenness and conventionality of those 
who ot to be significant. Women like 
the Misses Midleton—dignified, content, 
serene, for all their material poverty—are 
to be found in every small community, but 
very seldom have they been so delight¬ 
fully shown to the world as by Miss 
Freston. The only excuse for the intrigue, 
an exceptionally disgraceful one even out¬ 
side of Eden, is that it brings out the finest 
points of these sweet old gentlewomen. 
The disgrace of their niece’s flight with a 
“married, middle-aged man” was needed 


even to suggest to them that such a thing 
could be; how it could be in their own set, 
among their own flesh and blood, they 
would never understand. Nor, from the 
author’s delineation, does the reader 
understand; he can only accept, with the 
fulness of worldly knowledge, the possi¬ 
bility. The passion which might impel a 
man of fashion to a socially destructive 
step does not exist in the well-dressed 
stick which came as the serpent into Eden. 
For the woman’s part in the affair there is 
no reason, excepting that an Italian-Yan- 
kee may be expected to be unbalanced, 
and that the name “Monza” may impose 
an obligation to be shocking.” [Nation. 175 
YOUNG MAIDS AND OLD: [by C. L.. 
(Root) Burnham: Ticknor , 1888.] 

.‘This is another example of how well an 
honest-hearted and modest woman may 
amuse and entertain readers of her own 
sex. Without one approach to dangerous 
ground she has drawn the picture of a 
good-hearted but flirty girl for one of her 
heroines, and without one trace of prudish¬ 
ness delineated extreme modesty, refine¬ 
ment, and reserve in the other, while 
involving both of them in cordial, honest, 
happily terminated love-making. And on 
that achievement we are heartily glad to 
congratulate her. She is never dull, and 
she never preaches, but her story leaves a 
thoroly pleasant and desirable impression 
on the reader’s mind.” [ Catholic 
World. 176 

ZEPH. [by II..(F.) Jackson: Roberts , 
18S6.] “So careful a student of her art 
was Mrs. Jackson, and so much knowledge 
had she of how to study it wisely, that in 
the few years between her beginning to 
to write fiction and her death, she had 
already so far overcome the more super¬ 
ficial natural defects in her fiction* that 
few readers would notice them at all in 
Zepli. The plot of the story seems to us 
incongruous, artistically speaking. It be¬ 
gins with one motive, and seems to be end¬ 
ing with another. Zeph’s devotion to his 
wife is the theme at the outset, and it 
foreshadows a story of tragic loyalty, 


48 


NOVELS OK AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


unchangeable to the end. Yet soon we 
find this wife passing very easily out of his 
life, and after his divorce, his relation to 
Miss Sophy becomes the theme; nor does 
the assurance given by the sketch of the 
intended close, that the story was to be 
brut back to its original theme by the 
death of the first wife, entirely meet this 
objection. One cannot quite avoid the 
suspicion that some tender-heartedness on 
the author’s part towards her characters 
interfered with the carrying out of the 
tragedy to its legitimate end.” [ Over¬ 
land. ' 177 

ZURY. [by Jo. Kirkland: Houghton, 
1887.] “We cannot recall any fiction 
worth mention before “Zury” dealing with 
the middle West, except E: Eggleston’s 
stories, and Howe’s two gloomy novels. 
Mr. Kirkland in some respects excels 
either of these authors. He writes with a 
more assured pen, a more even and firm 
literary training. He is never crude, and 


is thoroly original, in the sense of never 
depending on conventional types in char¬ 
acter or incident, and copying nothing but 
life. Nevertheless, he is not very individ¬ 
ual, and either Mr. Howe’s or Mr. Eggles¬ 
ton’s stories leave a much more distinct 
mark on the mind than his. Perhaps by 
bis crude devices, perhaps in spite of them, 
Mr. Eggleston did attain “go;” and per¬ 
haps by his unconscionable imitation and 
ghastly sensationalism, perhaps in spite of 
them, Mr. Howe is impressive. “Zury” 
is full of excellences, yet it hardly im¬ 
presses itself on the reader. This is chiefly, 
w T e should say, because the plot is not 
pleasant, and the unpleasant element in it 
does not make itself seem necessary and 
inevitable, as it should in an artistic book; 
partly, too, because the style, admirable 
tho it is—plain, direct, and full of intelli¬ 
gence and quiet humor—has not that 
highly readable quality which may be 
called brightness.” [Overland. 178 


INDEX. 


Anonymous, [fly 3 “ Boseobel“Gem¬ 
ini,” “The New Schoolma’am,” “The 
Shady Side,” “Simply a Love-story.” 

Adams, M.., [fiy 3 “An Honorable Sur¬ 
render.” 

Alcott, L. M. (B3P “Little Women.” 

ALDRICH, T : 13., [fty “Stillwater Trag¬ 
edy,” “Story of a Bad Boy.” 

“Arr, E. H.” (J£y“New England By¬ 
gones.” 

Austin, J.. (G.), (fly “Desmond Hun¬ 
dred,” “Mrs. Beauchamp Brown.” 

Bardeen, C. W., gy 3 “Roderick 

H ume.” 

Bates, Arlo, (fiST “Lad’s Love,” 
“Lattv’s Perversities.” 

Beecher, II : Ward, “Norwood.” 

Bellamy, E (fly “Six to One.” 

Benedict, F. L.,(fry “Miss Van Cort¬ 
land,” “Price She Paid.” 

BERKSHIRE CO., MASS., (|y 
“Vacation in a Buggy.” 

“Bonner, Sherwood,” [K.. S. Mc¬ 
Dowell] ( try “Like unto Like.” 

Brown, H.. D., (fry “Two College 
Girls.” 

Bruce, E. M., (fly “Thousand a Year.” 


Brush, C. (C.), (fry “Tnsideour Gate.” 

Burnett, E.. (11.) (fly 3 “Louisiana.” 

Burnham, C. L.. (R.), my “Next 
Door,” “Young Maids and Old.” 

Burton, W. [“District School”] (fly 
No. 127. 

Bynner, E. L., (fly “Nirnport.” 

CALIFORNIA, (fly “Snowbound at 
Eagles” “Summer in a Canon.” 

Campbell, H.. (S.) (fly “His Grand¬ 
mothers” “What-to-uo Club.” 

CAM POBELLO, gy“April Hopes,” 
“Lad’s Love.” 

CANADA, (fly “A Chance Acquaint¬ 
ance.” 

Carpenter, Esther 13., (fy “South 
County Neighbors.” 

Cary, Alice, jy “Great Doctor.” 

Catiierwood, M.. (H.), (fly “Rocky 
Fork.” 

Chaplin, II. W., jy “Five Hundred 
Dollars.” 

CHESEBRO, C., [fly “Foe in the House¬ 
hold,” “Peter Carradine.” 

Clergymen, life of, (fly 3 “Shady Side,” 
“Thousand a Year,” also, Religious 
Views. 


49 




NOVELS OE AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


COD, CAPE, (fl^rf 3 “Cape Cod and All 
Along Shore.” “Cape Cod Folks,” “Five 
Hundred Dollars,” “A Reverend Idol.” 

College [Girl’s] Life, (U3T “Two 
College Girls.” 

CONNECTICUT, aer*' “Somebody’s 
Neighbors”, “Spliynx’ Children”, 
“Steadfast”. “Summer in Oldport.” 

Cooke, R.. (T.) [ft^gp “Somebody’s 

Neighbors”. “Spliynx’ Children”, 
“Steadfast.” 

“COOLIDGE, S..” [S.. C. WOOLSKY], 
(BSP “Little Country Girl.” 

Cox, M. (M.), RfW “Raymond Ker¬ 
shaw.” 

“Craddock, C: E.” [M.. N. Mur- 
free], (fpiP “In the Clouds,” “In the 
Teuu. Mountains.” 

Damon, S. M., RfcfT “Old New-England 
Days.” 

Deland, Ma. (Campbell), flOT’“John 
Ward.” 

DEMING, P.. “Adirondack Tales,” 
“Tompkins and Other Folks.” 

Devereux, G: H., (fiAT “Sam Shirk.” 

Dodge, JM.. (M.), flpjp “Theophilus.” 

Douglas. A. M., “A Woman’s 

Tnhpritfmpp ^ 

“Dunning, C...” (R3~ “Upon a Cast.” 

Eaton, F.., Q0T “Queer Princess.” 

Education and Society, relations of, 
H5§p“A Girl Graduate,” “Two College 
Girls.” 

Edwards, H. S., URW “Two Runa¬ 
ways.” 

Eggleston, E:, (K3T “Circuit Rider,” 
“End of the World,” “Graysons,” 
“Hoosier Schoolmaster,” “Mystery of 
Metropolisville,” “Roxy,” “Zury.” 

Eggleston, G: C., “Man of 

Honor.” 

Emery, S.. A., “Three Genera¬ 
tions.” 

“Fern, Fanny” [S.. P. (W.) (E.) 
Parton] “Rose Clark.” 

Field, C. (W.), “High Lights.” 

Flagg, W: J. QfW *“Good Investment.” 

FLORIDA, ffi^ 3 “ Boscobel,” “East 
Angels,” “A Tallahassee Girl.” 

Gibson. W: H., (ftAp “Pastoral Days.” 

GEORGIA, U0T “His Second Cam¬ 
paign.” 

“Hamilton, Gail” [M.. A. Dodge], 
UfrT “First Love is Best.” 

Hamilton, K. W., jpg 3 “Rachel’s 
Share of the Road.” 

Hardy, A. S.. [fiWf 3 “Wind of Destiny.” 

Harte, F. B., (rrVp “Snowbound ’ at 
Eagles.” 

Higginson, T: W., ftfW “Malbone.” 

Holland, J. G., flpgT “Miss Gilbert’s 
Career.” 

Holmes, O. W., flj^gf 3 “Elsie Yeuner,” 
“A Mortal Antipathy.” 

Hoppin, A:, UfW “Recollections of 


Auton House,” “Two Compton Boys.” 

Howard, Blanche AVL, IR3T “One 
Summer.” 

Howe, E. W., ^ “Story of a Country 
Town,” “Zury.” 

Howells, W: Dane, (B3T “Annie 
Kilburn,” “April Hopes,” “A Chance 
Acquaintance,” “Dr. Breen’s Practice,” 
“Lady of the Aroostook,” “A Modern 
Instance,” “Their Wedding Journey.” 

ILLINOIS, fl^ 3 “The Graysons,” 
“Zurv.” 

INDIANA, “End of the World.” 
“Hoosier Schoolmaster,” “Rocky Fork,” 
“Roxy.” 

Jackson, H.. (Fiske) (Hunt), 
“Between Whiles,” “Mercy Philbrick,” 
“Saxe Holm Stories,” “Zeph.” 

Jewett, S.. Orne, “Betty 

Leicester,” “Country Byways,” “Coun¬ 
try Doctor,” “Deephaven,” “King of 
Follv Island,” “Marsh Island,” “Mate 
of the Daylight.” “Old Friends and New,” 
“Tales of New England,” “White 
Heron.” 

Jewett, S. W. (Flint), “From 14 
to Fourscore.” 

Johnson, II.. (K.), RfW “Raleigh 
Westgate.” 

Jones, C: Hi. ifW" “Devault’s Mills.” 

Judd, S., QfW“ “Margaret,” “Richard 
Edney.” 

Kennedy, J: P., ffpif 3 “Swallow Barn.” 

Kirk, E. W. (Olney). ffW* “Love in 
Idleness,” “A Midsummer Madness.” 

Kirkland, Jo., (Jf^T “Zurv.” 

Larned, A., IfW" “Village Photo¬ 
graphs.” 

Lathrop, G: P. “Echo of Pas¬ 
sion,” “In the Distance.” “Newport.” 

Latimer, E. (W.), lfW“ “Our Cousin 
Veronica.” 

Litchfield, G.. D., Hf-W" “Only an 
Incident.” 

Longfellow, H: W., RfW* “Kavanagh.” 

LONG-ISLANl>, [ff-W 3 “Inside our 
Gate.” 

McLean, S. P., mar “Cape Cod Folks.” 

MAINE, (ffAp “The House of Yorke,” 
“Margaret,” "Mrs. Beauchamp Brown,” 
“Modern Instance,” “Pearl of Orr’s 
Island,” “Raleigh Westgate,” “Richard 
Ednev.” 

MASSACHUSETTS, “Cape Cod 
and all Along Shore.” “Cape Cod Folks,” 
“Cousin Polly’s Goldmine,” “An Earnest 
Trifler,” “In the Distance,” “Is that 
All?,” “Kavanagh,” “Miss Gilbert’s 
Career,” “Oldtown Folks,” “Oldtown 
Fireside Stories,” “Poganuc People,” 
“Rachel’s Share of the Road,” “ A Rev¬ 
erend Idol,” “Six to One,” “Three 
Generations.” “A Vacation in a Buggy.” 

Metcalf, W. H. ( fpg 3 “Summer in 
Oldport Harbor.” 


50 


NOVELS OK AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE. 


MINNESOTA, “Mystery of 

Metropolisville.” 

MISSISSIPPI, “Like unto Like.” 

NANTUCKET, jpg" “Six. to One.” 

NEW-ENGLAND, mgr “Achsali,” 
“Annie lvilburu,” “Betty Leicester,” 
“Cape Cod and all Along Shore,” “Cape 
Cod Folks,” “Capt. Polly,” “Country 
Byways,” “Country Doctor,” “Cousin 
Polly,” “Deephaveu,” “Desmond Hun¬ 
dred,” “Doctor Breen’s Practice,” 
“Doctor of Deane,” “Earnest Triller,” 
“Echo of Passion,” “Elsie Venuer,” 
“Gemini,” “House of Yorke,” “Hum¬ 
ble Romance,” “In the Distance,” “Is 
that All?,” “Kavanagh,” “King of 
Folly Island,” “Lady of the ‘Aroostook’,” 
“Little Women,” “Marsh Island,” 
“Mate of the Daylight,” “Miss Gilbert’s 
Career,” “Mrs. Beauchamp Brown,” 
“Modern Instance,” “New-England By¬ 
gones,” “Norwood,” “Old Friends and 
New,” “Old Maid’s Paradise,” “Old 
New-England Days,” “Okltown Fireside 
Stories,” “Oldtown Folks,” “One Sum¬ 
mer,” “Pearl of Orr’s Island,” “l’oga- 
nuc People,” “Rachel’s Share of the 
Road,” “Raleigh Westgate,” “Recollec¬ 
tions of Autun House,” “A Reverend 
Idol,” “Richard Eduey,” “Sam Shirk,” 
“Simply a Love-Story,” “Six to One,” 
“Somebody’s Neighbors,” “South County 
Neighbors,” “Sphynx’ Children,” 
“Steadfast,” “Stillwater Tragedy,” 
“Story of a Bad Boy,” “Summer in Leslie 
Goldthwaite’s Life,” “Summer in Old- 
port Harbor,” “ Tales of New-England,” 
“Tenting at Stony-Beach,” “Three Gen¬ 
erations,” “Two Compton Boys,” 
“Vacation in a Buggy,” “Village Photo¬ 
graphs,” “Way down East,” “White 
Heron,” “Wind of Destiny,” “Year in 
Eden.” 

NEWPORT, (B3H “Malbone,” “New¬ 
port.” 

NEW-YORK, “Adirondack 

Tales,” “Farnell’s Folly,” “Hannah 
Thurston,” “Inside our Gate,” “Only 
an Incident,” “Roderick Hume,” 
“Tompkins and other Folks,” “Uncle 


Jack’s Executors,” “Upon a Cast.” 

Noble, A. L.. jpg" “Uncle Jack’s Ex¬ 
ecutors.” 

Noble, Lucretia, “A Reverend 
Idol.” 

NORTH-CAROLINA, “Land of 

the Sky,” “Louisiana,” “A Summer 
Idyl.” 

NORTII-WESTERN STATES, jjpfr 
“Mystery of Metropolisville.” 

NOV A-SCOTIA, HPT “Pilot For¬ 
tune.” 

Oberholtzer, S. L. ( .), mST 
“Hope’s Heart-Bells.” 

Ogden, Ruth, !JfW “His Little Royal 
Highness.” 

OHIO, “Circuit Rider,” “Good 

Investment,” “The Great Doctor.” 

Olney, —, HfW “Harmonia.” 

Orne, I’., df^T “Simply a Love-Story.” 

Palmer, M.. (T.) JEST* “Doctor of 
Deane.” 

Parkman, Fr., dfW “Vassal 1 Morton.” 

PENNSYLVANIA, m3T “Beauty and 
the Beast,” “Hope’s . Heart-Bells,” 
“John Ward,” “Joseph and his Friend,” 
“Midsummer Madness,” “Miss Van 
Kortlandt.” 

Phelps [Ward], E.. S., O0T “In the 
Gray Goth,” “Men, Women and Ghosts,” 
“Old-Maid’s Paradise,” “Sealed Orders.” 

Physicians, women, ®3f““A Country 
Doctor,” “Doctor Breen’s Practice.” 

Pool, M. L.., m3T “Tenting at Stony 
Beach,” “Vacation in a Buggy.” 

Porter, A. E. ( .), (C3T “Cousin 
Polly.” 

Preston, II. W., y&T “Is that All?” 
“A Year in Eden.” 

Prime, W: C., dfW’ “Old House by the 
River.” 

Read, E., “Pilot Fortune.” 

“Reid, Christian,” tfW “Land of the 
Sky,” “A Summer Idyl.” 

RHODE-ISLAND, “Recollec¬ 

tions of Autun House,” “South County 
Neighbors,” “Two Compton Boys.” 

Religious matters, opposition of 
broad and narrow views of, JESP “Blufl- 
tou,” “John Ward,” “Love and Theol- 


51 







4 





m 


library of congress 


0 


020 126 186 7 


ogy." ‘‘Steadfast.” 

Richards. L. E. (Howe), ‘‘Queen 
Hildegarde.” 

Round. W: 3L F.. yr “Achsah,” 
“Rosecroft." 

Savage, 31. J., ']r^T “Blutfton.” 

Seafaring folk. “Cape Cod and 
all along Shore." “Five Hundred Dol¬ 
lars," “Mate of the Daylight." “Pearl 
of Orr's Island.” 

Second-rate fiction, characteristics 
of. £2T No. 174. 

Smith. M.. P. (W.) £3p -a Great 
Match." ‘‘Jolly Good Tina s." 

Smith. Skba. “Way down East." 

Southern States, pip “East-Angels." 
‘‘For the Major,” “Harmonia.” “His 
Second Campaign." “In the Clouds.” 
“In the Tennessee Mountain',” “Late 
Mrs. Null.” “Like unto Like.” “Man of 
Honor." ‘*Our Cousin Veronica," “Pod- 
man the Keeper." “Suzette." “Swailow 
Barn." “A Tallahassee Girl." ‘‘Two 
Runaways.” 

Sprague. M.. APM.v.]pg*“An Earnest 
Trifler.” 

Stockton. F. R:. “Late Mrs. 

Null." “Rudder Grange." 

Stoddard. W: O.. “Among the 

Lakes." 

Stowe. II. E.. (B.), “Oldtown 

Folks." “Oldtown Fireside Stories." 
“Pearl of Orr's Island." “Poganue 
People.” 

“Swett. Sophie." “Captain 

Polly.” 

Taylor, Bayard. “Beauty and 

the Beast.” “Hannah Thurston." “Jos¬ 
eph and his Friend." 

TEN \ ESSEF.. “In tiie Clouds,” 


“In the Tenn. Mountains.” 

Thompson, Maurice. ]^T ‘*His Sec¬ 
ond Campaign,” “A Tallahassee Girl.” 

Tiernan. M.. S. (Nicolas), J3P 
“Suzette.” 

Tincker. 31.. A., pW “The House of 

\orke.” 

TRANS-MISSISSIPPI STATES, 

“John Brent.” “Story of a Country 
Town,” “Zeph.” 

Trowbridge, J: T.. p 7 T “Coujkmi 
Bonds." “Fa in ell’s Folly.” “Neighbor 
Jackwood." “Old Battleground.” 

VERMONT. “Neighbor Jark- 

wood.” “Tompkins and other Folks.” 

WESTERN STATES, [see, also, 
Northwest, Trans-Miss. States], 
“Bluffton,” “Circuit Rider” “Endofthe 
World.” “A Good Investment.” “Gray¬ 
son",” “The Great Doctor.” “Hoosier 
Schoolmaster.” “Rocky Fork,” “Roxy." 
“Zury.” 

VIRGINIA, j'-TT* “Harmonia.” “Late 
Mrs. Null,” “Our Cousiu Veronica,” 
“Suzette.” “Swallow Barn.” 

Whitney. A. I). (T.), jgf* “Summer 
in Leslie Goldthwaite’s Life.” 

Wigglx, K. I>.. £ 1C ‘‘Summer in a 
Canon.” 

Wilkins, 31.. E.. $-lT‘ *‘A Humble 
Romance.” 

Winthrop, Th., “John Brent.” 

Women's Rights, “Hannah 

Thurston,” ■ 31iss Gilbert's Career.” 

[free. al>o. Physicians (Women). 

WOOLEY. C. (P.). £3= “A Girl Gradu¬ 
ate." “Love and Theology.” 

WooLson. C. F., pvT 3 “East-Angels,” 
“For the Major." “Rodman the Keeper.” 















